Landslide
by jelenamichel
Summary: The death of a probationary agent in the winter of 2015 links back to a case Ziva, Tony and McGee worked on their own after quitting NCIS in the summer of 2013. The story jumps back and forth between the two timelines, focusing on the changes in Ziva and Tony's relationship and the devil that Ziva can never seem to get off her back. T/Z relationship, angst and casefic. Out of canon
1. Chapter 1

A/N (forgive the length): This story started as crackfic at the end of season 10 when I was joking with some other peeps about what Ziva, Tony and McGee would do over the Summer of Unemployment. The idea of them opening a detective agency seemed so lame to me that it was hilarious, so I started writing for my own amusement. Then it turned into something else _entirely_, and I ended up with this. It's not crackfic anymore, and hopefully not too ridiculous a concept for you to swallow.  
IMPORTANT: The story takes place in two timelines, and flips back and forth between 2013 and 2015 in each chapter. So pay attention to the date cues or you'll get lost. It should be easy for you to follow if you pay attention to the dates. I will insert solid lines in between each switch of dates to make it easier.  
MORE IMPORTANT: After _Famiglia_ I said I'd never start posting a story again before I finished it. But here I am, breaking my promise. That's partly because I'd aimed to have it published before the start of season 11 so that it was still relevant. Now I just want it out there before all the Ziva/Tiva fans run away (as I fear most already have). I'm almost there. I promise I'll finish it.  
Much love and thanks to jsq and Pitselehvv.

* * *

**CHAPTER 1**

_Tuesday, December 15 2015_

There was nothing about the house on Bluebird Lane that made it stand out from any of the other houses in the Falls Church neighborhood. It was two stories of red brick Cape Cod style, with large shuttered windows downstairs, picture windows upstairs, and an old chimneystack that, despite the freezing temperature, wasn't producing any smoke. Although it appeared oversized even on its generous lot, the house had a welcoming façade with a huge, ancient oak tree on the lawn and manicured hedges lining the path that ran from the street to the front door. A blanket of fresh snow covered the roof and lawns of number 1326, although the driveway had been cleared earlier in the day. Christmas lights bordered the windows from the inside, a pine wreath tied with red ribbon hung on the front door, and a small plastic Santa Claus stood guard by the mailbox. It was middle-class suburban perfection, and the kind of scene that Ziva's imagination had conjured up when she was a child in Israel and thought of America.

In the ten years that Ziva had lived in the United States, she had seen plenty of picture perfect houses like this one. What had once seemed exotic was now almost mundane. But a decade after beginning her investigative career with NCIS, she had yet to find the mundane in a crime scene.

Ziva didn't know exactly what she was walking into or what to expect when she passed through the front door into the Christmas wonderland gone bad. In a morbid way, she had always found this part of the investigation the most exciting. Everything was new. Everything you laid your eyes on was a fresh piece of the puzzle. The investigation could lead in any direction, and it could be over in a day or two or stretch out for months. This was the part of the investigation where your actions had the potential to guarantee your success or failure at solving it. It was a clean slate, even in the messiest of scenes.

A quick glance around as she stood in the foyer suggested this scene would be fairly clean. There was an open doorway to her right that looked like it led to a formal dining room. Ahead of her was a staircase leading up to the second floor, with walls lined with decades of family photos. Beside the staircase was a hallway to the back of the house, and on her left was another doorway that mirrored the one across the foyer. The room beyond that was where the body would be, according to the local police who had arrived on scene first and then briefed Team Gibbs when they arrived. From where she was standing Ziva could not see the dead woman NCIS had come to see. The back of a white fabric couch obscured her view. But she could see the Christmas tree under which the dead woman supposedly lay.

A dead body left under a Christmas tree. The ghoulish symbolism was not lost on her.

The local police had informed them that the primary crime scene appeared to be in the kitchen. It was where Ziva would start her work, and she hefted her crime scene bag from her right to her left hand before looking over her shoulder at Gibbs. He met her eyes as he crossed the threshold into the house, and his white eyebrows barely lifted. Those who didn't know him might not even register that his expression had changed. But after spending ten years on his team, the question on his face was as apparent to Ziva as if he had yelled it at her.

"I will start in the kitchen," she told him.

Gibbs nodded and then gestured towards the man standing behind her right shoulder with his chin. "Take Quinn," he told her, and then regarded the fourth member of their team. "McGee, head upstairs. Make sure there's nothing up there that's been missed. Then start on checking every entry point."

"Got it," McGee said, and brushed between Gibbs and Ziva to head up the stairs.

Ziva looked over her other shoulder at Special Agent Dane Quinn, a blonde, brown-eyed man in his late 20s who stood slightly taller than McGee. He shot her a quick smile of acknowledgement before they headed down the hallway beside the stairs and went in search of the kitchen.

"Nice place," Quinn commented to her as he looked around and took it all in. "Very homey."

Ziva gave him a knowing smile. "House hunting even at crime scenes?"

Quinn had talked a lot in the last few months about his search for a new house with his girlfriend, Yasmin. They'd been living in a small, cold and leaky apartment since moving to Washington DC 18 months ago. They'd only ever intended for the apartment to be temporary, but they had never gotten around to moving. But now, halfway through their second winter in the icebox, the Southern California natives couldn't bear it any longer.

"A place like this is probably a little out of our reach," Quinn told her. "But I like what they've done with the heating. You know, in that they actually _have_ it."

"I thought you said you didn't mind the cold because it means you are forced to snuggle together," Ziva said as they entered the kitchen.

Quinn shrugged. "Sure. I like snuggling. But I also like being able to feel all my fingers and toes."

"It has not even been that cold this year."

Quinn shot her a disagreeable look. "You've been living in DC too long."

Ziva smiled to herself and then switched back into work mode and looked around the room. The kitchen was large, shiny and white, and filled with large, shiny and stainless steel appliances. A counter peninsula created a break between the kitchen and an informal meals area with a blonde wood table and six matching chairs. One of the chairs lay on its side on the floor, and Ziva and Quinn carefully stepped over to take a look at the only part of the room that appeared to have been disturbed.

"That's our primary crime scene?" Quinn asked. He seemed skeptical, perhaps even a little underwhelmed. Ziva could understand why. Aside from the knocked over chair, the only evidence that something out of the ordinary had happened in there was a thin pool of blood roughly the size of a saucer on the floor, and half a dozen blood drops.

"Hmm," Ziva grunted.

Quinn crouched with some difficulty, fighting the stiffness in his joints from his college football days. "The cops said she was dead, right?" he checked. "Drugged? Suffocated?"

"Perhaps we should refrain from trying to determine the cause of death before we even begin the investigation," Ziva said pointedly, and put down her bag.

He threw her a crooked smile. "Is that your Ducky impersonation?"

She threw him a smile and crouched as she opened her bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. Quinn followed suit and then retrieved the camera as Ziva pulled out a ruler to place beside the blood pool for reference.

"You see any obvious weapons around?" he asked her.

Ziva glanced around the immediate vicinity. The room was so clean and uncluttered that it was easy to tell that nothing was out of place. "No. We will need to go through the kitchen carefully."

Quinn took half a dozen shots and paused to look around the room. "It's going to be a shame to mess up all this clean with fingerprint powder."

She picked the fingerprint brush out of her kit and twirled it in her fingers. "I am sure the family would appreciate you cleaning up after us when we are done."

"I'll try."

They spent the next 45 minutes in relative silence as they worked their way methodically through the scene. Photos were taken, blood samples were collected, surfaces were dusted and dozens of fingerprints were lifted from the table, counter, door frames, drawers, chairs and walls, and then tagged. Ziva made a note of a paring knife missing from the knife block, checked the dishwasher for a weapon (hey, you never knew what you'd find unless you looked), and swabbed the sink drain for blood residue. Despite the number of fingerprints, which was to be expected in a residential kitchen, and the obvious blood on the floor, there wasn't a whole lot of physical evidence left behind. Ziva hoped there would be more to find on the body.

She looked over at Quinn as she peeled off her gloves and secured them in the crime scene kit. "Can you finish up with the rest of those?" she asked, gesturing at the evidence bags in front of him waiting to be collected.

Quinn gave her a vague salute and a smile. He was always smiling. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. He was the most relaxed investigator Ziva had ever known. "No problem," he said. "I got this."

"I am going to look at the body," she told him, and headed back to the hallway.

"Meet you there soon," he called after her.

The house felt too quiet and still as Ziva waked back to the living room. Local police and everyone else who wasn't NCIS had cleared out before they arrived, and now the house felt empty, cold and sad, as if it had taken on the grief and fear of the act that had started in the kitchen. She got a funny feeling in her stomach that could have been sympathy, but which she thought was more likely to be trepidation. But she ignored it and entered the living room.

Ducky and Jimmy were standing over the body of a young blonde woman, as Gibbs stood by and took notes of what he heard the medical examiners discuss. Only Jimmy looked up to toss her a smile as Ziva joined them, but she took no offence and focused on the woman lying beneath the Christmas tree. The first thing she noticed was the blood seeping through her blue jeans over her thighs. Not much, but enough to confirm an injury. The t-shirt she wore laid her arms bare, showing off fresh purplish-red bruises around her biceps and deep cuts and slashes from her wrists to her shoulders. The blood from the deeper wounds stained her pale blue t-shirt and seeped into the cream-colored carpet beneath her. More angry bruising marred the pale column of her throat, along with a few shallow nicks from a blade. Red rings around her wrists suggested she had been bound at one point. Ziva wondered if she'd been restrained against the upturned chair in the kitchen.

"She certainly didn't bleed to death, Jethro," Ducky was saying, leaving Ziva with the impression that he and Jimmy had only recently arrived on scene. "The wounds to her arms would have certainly required medical attention, had she lived. But they never would have killed her."

"They missed her large veins and arteries by a mile," Jimmy added.

"Strangled?" Gibbs guessed.

Ducky looked down upon the woman with sympathy. "Perhaps." He leaned over her to gently open her eyelids. "There appears to be some petechial hemorrhaging. Autopsy will confirm."

Ziva stepped forward to take a look for herself. It was something she did at every crime scene without thinking twice about it. But this scene was inexplicably different. When Ziva looked down at the victim, there were a few moments when she couldn't make sense of what she saw. She was overcome by a sense of familiarity that turned her blood to ice, and she blinked a few times to try to get her brain to kick into gear so that she could understand what was going on. Finally, she got there, and she gasped quietly to herself and took an involuntary step backwards.

"Where is McGee?" she suddenly asked, interrupting Gibbs mid-sentence.

The three men crowded around the body looked up at her curiously. Gibbs seemed primed to give her a quick reprimand for butting in, but his expression softened to something in the realm of concern when he saw her face.

"Checking for an entry point," he replied.

Ziva's eyes flicked back to the victim. She took a closer look at her face to make sure she was right about what she thought she knew. Her stomach cramped and her throat grew tight and sore, and when she realized that her hand was shaking she quickly balled it up in a fist.

She turned her head towards the front door. "McGee!" she called out.

Gibbs approached her as she took another small step away from the body.

"Ziva?" Gibbs said quietly. "What do you see?"

Ziva glanced at Gibbs and back at the woman. Her heart had picked up speed and she started feeling hot and prickly all over, and for a few moments she indulged in the beginnings of a panic attack. But then Gibbs laid his hand gently on her shoulder, grounding her, and Ziva shook her head and forced her emotion to the side.

"I think I know her," she told him, and then looked up as both McGee and Quinn came into the room. "McGee!'

The senior field agent came around the side of the couch to her and looked down at her with the same concern that Gibbs aimed at her. "What's wrong?"

Ziva gestured at the dead woman with her chin. "Have you seen her?" she asked.

McGee looked over at the body. "No, not yet. I've been outside."

"Take a closer look."

McGee carefully stepped over the woman's legs and then crouched down by her chest. Ziva watched his eyes wander over her body—an investigator looking for clues—before settling on her face. For a few seconds his expression was blank, and then he frowned sharply and snapped his head around to look at Ziva. It was all the confirmation she needed that she was right, and she sighed with heavy sadness.

"Bonnie Stewart," McGee said.

Ziva swallowed hard and nodded, and Gibbs flipped page a page or two in his notebook.

"_Special Agent _Bonnie Stewart, aged 26," he told them. "Probie who started with NCIS just a month ago."

The information got him twin looks of surprise from Ziva and McGee.

"She is NCIS?" Ziva asked.

"That's what her mother said," Gibbs told her. "And that's what NCIS says."

"You've met her before?" Quinn guessed.

"Yeah," McGee replied, holding Ziva's sad gaze. "Summer of 2013."

Ziva gave him a bittersweet smile, heavy on the bitter. "Bonnie Stewart was our first client."

* * *

_Wednesday, 26 June 2013_

Ziva felt a sense of relief when she turned the corner onto her street and laid eyes on her house 100 yards away. She had been running for about an hour, and while normally that wouldn't test her fitness too much, the shoulder injury she'd sustained when Bodnar drove his car into Tony's sedan two months ago hadn't healed as she'd hoped. Lately she had noticed a stabbing pain in her shoulder after only about 20 minutes of exercise. Her common sense told her to take it easy and maybe see a physiotherapist. But her stubbornness told her to just suck it up and cope while it healed. And anyway, if she saw a doctor about it or otherwise admitted to the injury in any way, Tony and McGee would be on her back about it. That kind of scrutiny was hard to avoid these days; even more so than the days when they all worked together for 60+ hours a week.

She took a few minutes on the street before she went inside to stretch and cool down. Then, when she was sure that she wouldn't make any wincing faces when she moved her arm, she walked up the path through her small front yard, climbed the steps and then walked into the lovely old brownstone home that she had bought on a half-crazed whim a month ago. There was music coming from the kitchen, and a moment later she heard the bickering she'd become accustomed to hearing in her home over the last few weeks. It was comforting. And annoying. But mostly comforting.

"It's not supposed to make that noise," Tony was saying. "I'm telling you. You're going to break it and she's going to get mad."

"Would you just relax?" McGee shot back. "Have some faith. I know what I'm doing. It's just a machine."

Ziva frowned to herself as she quietly closed the front door and wondered what the hell McGee was in the process of breaking.

"Nope, uh-uh, not supposed to do that," Tony argued immediately before there was a short, sharp burst of noise that sounded like they were taking an angle grinder to the kitchen bench. "MCGEE!"

"Okay. That didn't sound right," McGee conceded.

Fearing the worst, Ziva rushed down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house. Her two quasi-roommates were standing over her coffee machine. McGee's expression was thoughtful. Tony's was one of trepidation, and then, when he looked up and saw her, it turned to feigned innocence.

"Oh. Hey, there," he said casually as his eyes quickly flicked over her Lycra-clad body. "Uh, me and McGee were just going to make you coffee."

McGee's body snapped to a straight line as he turned to face her. He tried to look innocent too, but he'd never had a very good poker face. "Cappuccino?" he offered.

Ziva walked over to the coffee machine and stood between them. "What did you do to it?" she demanded.

"Nothing," they replied in unison.

"I heard a bad grinding noise."

"Well, it grinds coffee, right?" Tony tried.

"I just pressed the wrong button," McGee said reassuringly.

Ziva gave him the stink eye and leaned over the Saeco. "Did you put enough beans in it?"

"I think so."

Ziva opened the top of the machine, noted the lack of beans, and gave McGee and gentle whack on the arm. "You need to fill this."

"Oh." He went to the freezer, pulled out the bag of coffee beans and brought it back over. "To the top?"

"Yes."

"Got it. Thanks."

As he had a second go at making the machine work, Ziva went to the fridge for a bottle of water. She felt Tony's eyes on her, and turned quickly enough to catch his eyes in the vicinity of her legs. But he didn't seem particularly embarrassed at being caught.

"When did you leave this morning?" he asked.

"Only an hour ago." She took a few sips of water and looked a little more closely at him. He was in a grey t-shirt and track pants, and his hair was a little more mussed than he was usually comfortable with. "Did you just wake up?"

"Not _just_," he said defensively. "Half an hour ago."

The two of them had stayed up very late the night before watching _The Godfather _trilogy. With no job as such to go to anymore, it didn't matter so much when they stayed up to three in the morning talking or watching television or sharing some drinks. Ziva was still trying to keep to some kind of regular routine. Tony was enjoying sleeping in. And since Ziva had moved into the three-bedroom brownstone, he enjoyed sleeping in a couple of times a week in the bedroom he had to himself upstairs.

Ziva looked to McGee. "Did you stay here last night? I did not hear you come in."

"Uh, yeah," McGee said as he successfully got the coffee machine going. "You guys were sleeping through the Pope's death when I poked my head into the living room."

"Oh."

"Did you have a nice date with Delilah?" Tony purred.

McGee smiled at the mention of the girlfriend Tony and Ziva were still yet to meet, but played it close to his chest. "Yes. It was very pleasant."

"Pleasant?" Tony repeated. "Wow. Sounds…hot."

"When are you going to introduce us?" Ziva asked.

"It's been months," Tony added.

"She is obviously special to you," Ziva continued. "So she is special to us."

"And we want to know what she looks like," Tony said.

Ziva shot him a quick frown that warned him to stay away from the blatant truth and instead help her fight the battle from the position of caring about McGee's happiness. "Maybe you could bring her over for dinner one evening," she suggested, turning her gaze back to McGee. "I need to break in the kitchen, yes?"

McGee gave them each a wry smile. "Well, thanks for the offer, Mom," he said to her, and then looked at Tony. "_Dad_. But I'm going to keep her away from you for a while longer."

Tony dialed up his hurt. "Are you saying you're _embarrassed_ by us?"

"Yes," McGee replied without a trace of humor.

Ziva rolled her eyes and filed the Delilah argument away to work on another time. "Fine. Just know that you are welcome to bring her over at any time."

"Thank you."

Ziva took a final sip of water and put the bottle back in the fridge. "I am going to take a shower."

…

Twenty minutes later Ziva had just finished drying off and was starting to towel dry her hair. Her thoughts were running towards what she should do with her day. Something constructive, she decided. All she had done yesterday was sit in the small, shady courtyard at the back of her house and read. It had been good for her soul, but not necessarily for anything else. Particularly her bank balance. She had bought the house outright with the money her father had left for her, and she had enough savings to keep her going for a few more months if she lived frugally. But she was still worried about the financial implications of long-term unemployment. And not just for her. Tony and McGee were in the same boat. McGee still had some savings from his time as the New York Times' best-selling author, and he got small sales checks delivered every now and then. Ziva knew he had decided to start on another book, and chances were that with his _nom de plume_ on the cover it would sell as well as the last. But not until he had finished it, and that was months away. As for Tony, Ziva knew he was hurting the worst out of all of them. He'd given his father loans over the years that had eaten into his finances, and he couldn't afford to be without a steady paycheck for much longer.

That was part of the reason that the three of them were here and spending so much time in this house. In the days after they had quit NCIS, they had gotten together several times to talk about what to do. They had hope that Gibbs would be able to get them all reinstated at NCIS, but they couldn't guess at how long that would take. In the month that they had been gone they hadn't heard a word from him. They knew he was on assignment, but no one—not Abby or even Ducky—knew what the assignment was. Or _where_ he was. They all tried to make out that they were not all that worried. Gibbs knew how to handle himself. They trusted that Vance would not send him to his death. But honestly, they _were_ worried. Very worried. And so when they got together in those first few days of unemployment, they drank to calm themselves down. Drank until they were stupid drunk. And while they were stupid drunk and talking about what to do with their time until their lives went back to normal, they all sort of talked their way into the idea of starting their own private investigation business. The idea was silly, really. But when they'd sobered up they couldn't think of a better idea.

So here they were.

They had a business registered. They had office space in the basement of Ziva's new house. They had loosely defined roles (McGee would do the computer stuff, Tony would do the talking stuff and Ziva would do the action stuff). But the one important thing that they didn't have was work. With a full day of nothing scheduled ahead of her, Ziva thought it was probably time that the three of them started using their contacts to get the word out that they were open for business. And would take on anything. Except private security—Tony had drawn a _very_ clear line in front of that one. He wasn't going to be a rent-a-cop.

She started making a list in her head of people to get in touch with when someone knocked on the door to her en suite.

"Hey, Ziva?" Tony said from the other side.

Ziva wrapped her towel around her and went to the door. She would have to open it herself if they were to have a conversation. The three of them had only been semi-living with each other for about three weeks (Tony and McGee still had their own apartments, but often spent the night in their own bedrooms here), but already there had been a few too many unappreciated walk-ins. Particularly between Tony and McGee, who had to share a bathroom. After the fourth time it happened they vowed to be more respectful.

She opened the door and looked up at Tony. "Yes?"

His eyes drifted down her body again but he brought them up again quickly. But not before Ziva's stomach flipped with want, and then twisted with regret. The two of them were still hands off. Best friends with a complicated history and an unclear future. But they were working on that.

"Sorry to interrupt bath time," Tony was saying. "But I have good news."

Ziva arched an eyebrow and leaned against the doorframe. "Oh?"

Tony nodded and gave her an unburdened smile, the likes of which she hadn't seen in weeks. "Oh, yeah," he replied. "I just took a call. A _business_ call."

Ziva frowned with surprise as she felt a little flutter of hope in her belly. "_This_ business?"

"Our business," Tony told her. "A woman with a stalker problem is on her way in to see us." He paused and flashed her a bigger smile. "You better get dressed, because we've got our very first client."

* * *

_Tuesday, December 15 2015_

Ziva was snapping photos of footprints in the snow beside Bonnie Stewart's driveway when she heard McGee's familiar gait approaching her. His footsteps stopped about five feet behind her, and Ziva swallowed her tight throat away as she waited for him to speak. When he didn't, Ziva considered ignoring him. But that wasn't how their relationship worked these days. She tried not to give people—particularly people she loved—the cold shoulder when she was feeling scared and needed to get a hold of herself. No matter how much she wanted to.

She snapped a photo and then turned around to face him. McGee was watching her with concerned green eyes that simultaneously made her want to tell him to leave her alone, but also hug him. She chose to give him a weak smile.

"I am okay," she told him.

McGee sighed and took two steps towards her. "It's a shock," he stated.

Ziva let out a humorless chuckle. "A shock," she repeated. "I did not even know that she was training to be an NCIS agent."

McGee eyed her knowingly. "Me neither. But I can't say I'm surprised."

"Why not?"

He shrugged and let his eyes wander away, giving her the illusion of space that he probably guessed that she needed. "I guess she struck me as someone who was interested in helping people. And who got angry at the crappy things people do to each other."

Ziva lifted her chin towards the house. "Someone did something crappy to her. Again." Her thoughts drifted to the first time she had met Bonnie, and bile rose in her throat. Unconsciously she wrapped her arms around herself and swallowed hard. "She was strangled, McGee," she said. "Strangled and slashed."

McGee's eyes turned sad, and he stepped right up to her. "You sure you're okay?"

"I am fine," she replied automatically.

Her partner gave her a look that told her he didn't buy that for a second. She sighed pointedly at him.

"I _will_ be fine," she revised. "I was just not expecting to see her."

"No," McGee agreed. "You should call Tony."

Ziva felt a pang in her chest when she thought about how Tony would react to the news. Another sharp pang came when she realized that she really, _really_ wanted to see him right now. But she was on the clock, so her private, mini meltdown with him would have to wait.

She shook her head at McGee as if it was no big deal. "I will tell him tonight. If I see him," she added with a rueful smile. There was never a guarantee that would happen. For two federal agents, living together and even sharing a bed didn't necessarily mean that they saw each other every day.

McGee nodded and reached out to gently squeeze her elbow in support before turning and walking back to the house. Ziva watched him go, and then let her eyes wander over the property as she wondered how Bonnie's killer had gotten inside. Had he simply walked up to the front door, knocked and then taken advantage of her surprise? Ziva shivered at the thought and lifted a hand to rub at her throat, but she froze again when she caught sight of Gibbs watching her from the front porch. Had he been there when she was talking to McGee? Had he caught that all this had rattled her? It was likely, she knew, and that put her off even more. She didn't want to get into her history with Bonnie with him—well, not _all_ of it. But once Gibbs knew something was up, he was like a dog with a bone. Ziva wasn't in the mood to be chewed on, though, so she turned her back on him and got back to work. She had to focus on finding Bonnie's killer.

She owed her that much.

* * *

_A final note: I'm not watching season 11, I haven't watched Ziva's farewell episodes and I don't intend to. If you want to know my thoughts on the new season, my answer is that I have none and I'm not interested in getting any. Just wanted to make that clear and easy for you because I know I will be asked.  
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter, and fingers crossed that will continue with what's to come. This is perhaps only the first or second story of mine that I really personally like, so I hope you do too. _


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: After the chapter.

* * *

_Tuesday, December 15 2015_

Tony stood in front of the open fridge door and stared down at the contents dejectedly. He hadn't had dinner while he was at work, so now his stomach was grumbling and complaining about being empty. But he knew from decades of experience that if he ate a meal now, just an hour before his planned bedtime, he wouldn't sleep well. A snack would be better, and given the state of the fridge (almost as empty as his stomach), a snack seemed more likely. But all the only things of offer was some left over curry from two days ago that he'd hated, condiments, beer, butter, and the last _sufganiyot_ left over from Hanukkah. He knew he should leave that for Ziva. She loved those things. But it was either that or eat flour from the cupboard.

"Sorry, sweetcheeks," he muttered under his breath, and reached for the donut. She'd understand. Maybe. He paused with the container in his hand and thought it over. It was after 2100 and he knew she'd been on scene all day. Depending on the condition of the scene and the body, Ziva would either be sickened and not in the mood for eating, or tired and ravenous.

Okay. He could compromise.

He carried the container over to the counter, grabbed a knife, cut the donut in two and returned half of it to the fridge. He got a beer to wash his half down with, and then headed to the living room to settle in, savor the deep fried sugary deliciousness, and catch up on world events that he hadn't been keeping track of for the last couple of days.

As soon as he turned the news on his brain almost checked out completely. It wasn't that he didn't have an interest in world affairs. He just had more of an interest in making plans in his head for taking a break from work. It wasn't even Christmas yet and this winter was shaping up to be even worse than last year's. It had been snowing since the end of November, the long-term forecast was for a couple of heavy falls through to March, and God only knew how many dead sailors would pile up between now and then. Tony loved his job, but he was fast approaching his limit for murder this season, and it had only just begun.

He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the couch cushions. Where would he rather be? Somewhere warm, was the obvious answer. Hot was better. But not desert hot. He hated the desert. No, it had to be somewhere balmy with water and bikinis and fruity little cocktails with umbrellas in them. Somewhere in the South Pacific. He and Ziva could spend a couple of weeks on an island thawing out, recharging and maybe making some progress on that baby idea they'd floated a couple of times. He felt himself smile, even if he knew it was unlikely to happen. The vacation, that was. He still had hopes for the baby.

He drifted off to a half sleep then, thinking about family and future. But he was still vaguely aware of the news in the background and the half bottle of beer balancing against his chest. He kept pulling his chin back up every time it dropped too low, and he made a few attempts to open his heavy eyes. But he remained in that weird place between sleep and awake with half dreams/half thoughts in his head about swimming in a warm ocean and kissing hot, salty skin right up until he heard the front door close. The sound brought him awake, but his eyes were still too heavy to open as he listened to Ziva's footsteps coming up the hardwood hallway. Then the footsteps stopped and he listened to the swish of her clothes as she crossed the rug towards him.

"Mgh," he grunted when she took the bottle of beer out of his hand.

Ziva chuckled and leaned over to kiss his slack lips. "You will make a mess on yourself," she whispered.

Tony swallowed, licked his lips and made a Herculean effort to open his eyes. He looked up to see Ziva casting a glance at the television as she drank down half the remaining beer. He acknowledged the feeling of relief in his chest that he felt every night when she came home safe, and then yawned and stretched his arms above his head. "I was having a dream-thought," he told her.

Ziva looked down at him with guarded eyes. She smiled at him with affection he knew was real, but he guessed that she had something else on her mind. "You were dreaming of having a thought?" she teased, and then leaned down to kiss him again. "Keep trying. You will have a real thought one day."

He tugged on the belt of her winter coat until she dropped onto the seat beside him, and then put his arm around her shoulders to hug her closer to him. "I had a half dream, half thought about going to an island in the South Pacific and spending a couple of weeks swimming, sleeping and screwing."

Ziva rested her head on his shoulder. "In that order?"

"Not necessarily."

She hummed. "Sounds wonderful."

"I know."

"And very dream-like."

He pressed his lips to her cool curls. "Maybe not. Gibbs'll still have McGee and McGee's partner to keep him company."

Ziva chuckled at his reference to 'McGee's partner' instead of Quinn. She thought he liked Quinn as a person, just not as Ziva's partner. Because that was who _Tony_ was.

"Maybe," Ziva said. "In the new year."

"I'm holding you to it," Tony told her. They both knew he wouldn't. "There's half a donut in the fridge if you want it."

"Is that all?"

"I think I saw mustard, too. We need to do some grocery shopping." He rubbed her arm. "You want me to order you a pizza or something?"

Ziva shook her head against him. "No. Not hungry."

Tony knew what that meant. The good news was that he'd be able to eat the rest of the donut himself. The bad news was that Ziva had caught a rough case. "What happened?"

For a while, Ziva stayed quiet. He had learned in their time that this didn't mean she wasn't going to tell him, or wanted him to drop it. But when she responded it was clear that she wasn't _quite_ ready to talk about it. "Can we talk about your day first?"

"Sure," he said, and took the beer back from her to take a drink. "We found a foot."

Ziva tilted her head back to look at him and frowned. "A foot?"

"Mhmm."

"Just one foot?" she checked. "Not a pair?"

"A lonely man's size 14," he told her.

Ziva made a face, and then leaned forward and away from him to open her coat and wrestle her way out of it. "Where?"

"Rock Creek Park," he said, and helped her free her left elbow.

Ziva tossed the coat over an armchair beside the couch and then bent to take off her boots. She looked over her shoulder at him. "How did Celia like that?"

Tony smirked, but gave her a vaguely admonishing look. Celia Blake was Tony's senior field agent. She had 10 years at NCIS and the FBI under her belt and had worked everything from murder to narcotics to white collar crime and intelligence. But she had a tendency to get a bit squeamish with the grizzlier crime scenes.

"She did fine," Tony told her.

"Any idea who the foot belongs to?"

"A pirate?" Tony guessed.

Ziva chuckled and nudged her boots under the coffee table. "Why is it NCIS's case?"

"Dog tags stuffed in the shoe," he told her. "But the guy to whom the dog tags belong is alive and well and is walking on his own two feet."

"Hunh." She shifted and turned on the couch to face him, and regarded him with eyes that were sad and perhaps a little scared. He put his hand on her knee and waited, and Ziva dropped her head and covered his hand with hers.

"Bad one?" he guessed.

"Yes," she said roughly, and then lifted her head again. "Bonnie Stewart."

The name tugged something in Tony's memory, but for a few moments he couldn't quite pull it free. When finally he did, he understood the look on Ziva's face. His heartbeat quickened and he felt his stomach roll with nausea as he recalled that time in their lives. His first instinct was to grab Ziva and hold on to her, but if she wanted that she would have come to him already. He held back, took a breath and squeezed her knee.

"Damn it," he sighed. "How did she die?"

Ziva dragged her free hand through her hair, and all of a sudden looked ten times more tired than she had five minutes ago. "Ducky will do the autopsy in the morning," she told him, her voice thick. "But she had a lot of bruises around her neck…" Her voice trailed off, and Tony couldn't hold back any more. He sat up and wrapped his arms around her, and felt relief when Ziva leaned into the embrace. When things got personal—and this case would definitely be personal—Ziva had a tendency to withdraw from everyone and go take on the world by herself. God, when they first met Bonnie, Tony was sure that he and Ziva were still trying to deal with a time when she'd done just that. But if he held on to her now, right at the beginning, and if she let him do it, he knew there was a good chance that she'd let him stay there until the end.

She breathed deeply into his neck and said, "I am all right."

Tony kissed her cheek, and then pulled back just far enough so they could talk. "Why was NCIS called?"

Ziva gave him a weak but proud smile. "She had just completed her training to become an agent," she told him. "She was going to start at Norfolk in January."

Despite the circumstances, Tony smiled. He remembered Bonnie being pretty tough, with a very clear desire for justice. When they'd met more than two years ago, Bonnie had been studying public relations at college, and she'd never mentioned anything about being interested in law enforcement. But he knew that Ziva had left an impression on her. The idea that his partner might have inspired someone to step up and become a federal agent filled him with pride.

"Good for her," he said.

Ziva's smile dropped. "For what it is worth now."

"Ziva," he sighed, and rubbed her shoulder. "Did you tell Gibbs what happened?"

She swallowed hard and looked down at her lap. "No, but I expect he will find out. Me and McGee told him that she had been our client, back in the day."

Tony lifted his hand to touch her cheek, and Ziva lifted her gaze again. "Yeah," he said. "She was our first."

* * *

_Wednesday, June 26 2013_

Bonnie Stewart had the kind of features that would make her look naturally happy, even if she was sad. A delicate nose and cheekbones, bright blue eyes and lips that naturally turned upwards. She had the complexion of a porcelain doll, and her pale blonde hair was tied in a high ponytail. She was a little shorter, a littler curvier, and perhaps ten years younger than Ziva. When she turned up to meet the team, she was wearing a sleeveless, knee-length dress that showed off a striking, watercolor-like tattoo running across her shoulder.

Bonnie brought her friend, Kavita, with her to meet with Ziva, Tony and McGee. At first, Tony thought that was because she needed her friend's support. Not long into their conversation, though, he started wondering if Kavita was there to keep her from jumping out of her chair and demanding immediate action. Because Bonnie Stewart was _pissed_.

"This piece of crap jerk wad won't leave me alone," she told the team, her voice filling the basement that the team had converted into their office space. "I've told him nicely, I've told him firmly, I've told him impolitely in text, email, Facebook and face-to-face to get away from me, but he's not listening. I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Start a thread on Reddit?"

Tony wasn't completely sure what Reddit was, but he got the gist of her complaint. "I assume you've spoken to the police before coming here?"

Bonnie rolled her eyes, seemingly unimpressed with the service she'd received from the boys in blue. "They said that because I didn't have any firm evidence of what he's been doing, there wasn't much they could do. But that if he approached me and I felt threatened I should call 911."

"If he doesn't kill her before she gets to her phone," Kavita added bluntly.

Tony looked between Ziva and McGee. Ziva was sitting beside him on one side of the small conference table they'd squeezed in between two other desks, some shelves and filing cabinets in Ziva's basement. McGee was at the end of the table with a laptop in front of him, ready to take notes. Both McGee and Ziva gave him discreet nods when he met their eyes, deferring to him to take the lead on questioning. He knew they'd both jump in when they wanted to.

"Okay. Why don't you start from the beginning?"

Bonnie took a deep breath to calm herself, folded her hands in her lap, and started giving them the facts. "A couple of months ago I was out with Kavita and some other friends when I met this guy, Eddie Hertzog." She passed her cell phone over to him, and Tony looked at the displayed photo of a relatively good-looking guy with dark blonde hair and an even white smile.

"How long is a couple of months?" Tony asked, and passed the phone to Ziva.

Bonnie looked over to Kavita as she thought is over. "It was about a week after Thanksgiving," she said, and Kavita nodded when it sounded right to her. Bonnie looked at the team with a touch of apology. "I can't remember the date, exactly. I'm not really an anniversary kind of girl."

Tony's eyes flicked in Ziva's direction, and he caught a hint of a smile on her lips as she related. Tony held his smile back. "So, about seven months."

Bonnie nodded. "Right. We met at this bar, Pangaea. He was with his friends, I was with mine. We'd never met before. But we kept running into each other that night and eventually started talking. He seemed nice and normal and funny. We had a lot in common. I didn't get a weird vibe from him at all."

"You started seeing each other," Ziva said.

"Yeah. A lot. Probably too much and too fast." Bonnie sighed and shook her head at herself. "If I'd just taken things slower, I wouldn't be in this mess."

"Bonnie, if he is stalking you then it is not your fault," Ziva told her, drawing Tony's gaze. "Abusive men can work quickly to begin manipulating you, and you often do not notice until a specific event. It is what they plan for."

Something twisted in Tony's gut at hearing her speak about it as if she were an expert. But he kept his cop face in place and looked for Bonnie's reaction. Their new client visibly relaxed as she listened to Ziva, and it was clear that she'd just found the level of understanding that she'd been hoping for. She gave Ziva a little smile of thanks and then went on.

"I guess. Anyway, everything was fine for the first month. Great, even. We had a blast on New Year's." A smile flashed over her face, but fell away quickly. "But one day I was getting ready to meet Kavita for lunch, and he seemed to get annoyed that I was, I don't know, picking her over him or something."

Tony nodded at the familiar story. If he had a dollar for every abuse case that started that way, he'd be a rich man. A disgusted, but rich, man.

"I met Kavita anyway," Bonnie told them. "But when I saw him next he was really mad about it. My gut said it just wasn't right, and I wanted to break up with him right then. But somehow he talked his way out of his behavior."

"He's good at talking his way out of things," Kavita said. "Good at being charming."

"And that behavior continued?" Tony asked.

Bonnie made a face like that wasn't quite right. "Not right away," she said. "But over time, yeah. It did. I guess he seemed like he'd heard me when I said I didn't like him being like that, because he didn't get, like, overtly angry with me if I made plans without him. But somehow he just started making me feel guilty about it." She paused and heaved a sigh. "Then the phone calls started. Dozens a day where he'd ask where I was and who I was with and what I was doing. He left voicemails and sent texts, and I guess for a while it made me feel like he was just really into me. But when I went to a movie with Kavita and turned my phone off—I frigging _hate_ people who are on their phone all the way through a movie."

"God, me too," Tony said.

"At the end of the movie I had, like, 20 missed calls, five voicemails and about 20 text messages from him."

"She was only unreachable for _two hours_," Kavita said, trying to underline the craziness in case the others missed it.

"It's excessive," Tony agreed. "Did you confront him about it?"

Bonnie gave a bitter chuckle. "Yeah, and he twisted it so that I was in the wrong for not letting him know where I was and letting him think that I'd been killed in a car accident or something."

McGee looked up from the notes he was typing into Bonnie's file. "How long into the relationship was this?" he asked.

"A little over two months," Bonnie told him. "I stood up to him then and I told him I didn't want to have anything to do with someone who was so possessive."

"I assume he did not take that news very well?" Ziva asked.

Bonnie almost laughed. "Actually, he did at the time. It was so weird. It was like one second he was yelling about not knowing where I was 24 hours a day, and then I broke it off and he changed his tune right away. He said I was probably right and it was unfortunate the relationship worked out that way, and he wished me all the best."

"Back to the normal, charming guy," Tony said. "With empathy on top."

"Exactly," Bonnie said. "I felt like I'd dodged a bullet. And we went our separate ways. But then I ran into him again."

"He staged it," Kavita shot in.

Bonnie looked both frustrated and tired, as if the two of them had already talked this over a hundred times. "Probably," she allowed. "It was at another bar. He came over, turned the charm up to 11 and by the end of the night I'd agreed to see him again." She paused as her expression fell into one of embarrassment, and looked up at Ziva. "I know you must think I'm stupid."

"No," Ziva said gently. "Of course not."

"But I hear myself saying this now, and I know how dumb it sounds," Bonnie said. "When I'd had so many problems with him, why would I agree to see him again?"

"Because he wanted you to," Ziva said. "He had worked out how to put your fears to rest."

Bonnie rubbed her face. "It's just…you know how you hear these stories and you think to yourself that you'd never be so blind or desperate or stupid to let it happen to you?"

Ziva nodded reassuringly. "I know," she said without judgment.

"And you think that you'd see the signs a mile away," Bonnie went on. "You can't believe that anyone wouldn't."

"Sometimes it's just hard to be objective when you're right in the middle of something," Kavita told her, and reached over to squeeze her hand.

Bonnie shot her a weak smile. "Doesn't make it any less embarrassing."

"You're not the one in the wrong," Tony told her.

"I listened to him," Bonnie pointed out. "I shouldn't have."

"Bonnie, I've been a cop for almost 20 years," he told her. "I've met a lot of guys like this one. And I can tell you that they are really, really good at manipulating people. Including the kind of people who you'd never expect to fall for it. They take advantage of people's base need to trust other people and assume that everyone they come across is as good and as pure of heart as they are. And they do it without you even realizing. Don't be so hard on yourself, okay? He's a professional at this."

Kavita nodded along, looking back and forth between Tony and Bonnie to make sure Bonnie was listening to him and understanding him. Bonnie looked like she was starting to come around, but was still punishing herself. He knew from experience that she'd have to work on that by herself, and it would probably take her a while to get over it.

"So, you renewed your relationship then?" McGee asked.

Bonnie nodded, and for the first time looked like she might cry. But she held on to her tears and pushed through. "Yeah. And like the first time, it was great at the start. Fast-forward a month and he's back to being possessive. I broke it off again, but when he went this time, it wasn't with grace."

"What happened?" Ziva asked gently.

"He just started screaming at me about stringing him along and making him look like a fool," Bonnie said, and although her voice was steady, the way her arms and legs crossed showed that she'd been scared and humiliated by it. "I tried to leave but he grabbed my arm and he was squeezing it," she lifted her hand to mime the movement. "But I pulled free and I left."

"Did he leave marks?" McGee asked as carefully as possible so as not to upset her more.

Bonnie shook her head. "Just a little bruise."

"Little bruise, big bruise, he's still a dick," Kavita said.

Tony agreed. "What happened then?"

"He started showing up at work," Bonnie said. "I work part-time at a bistro in Georgetown, and when I was waiting tables I noticed the he was sitting on a bench across the road and watching me."

"Just once?" Ziva asked.

"No. Just about every time I worked a shift, at some point I'd look across the street and he was there."

"Did he ever come in?" Tony asked.

"No. Just sat on the other side of the street."

"Then he showed up across the street at our apartment," Kavita said. "There's this really pretty park with a playground in front of our building, and her bedroom window looks out onto it. And he'd stand in the park and watch her windows. Like, every other day."

"Did he ever try to enter your apartment?"

Bonnie and Kavita shared a look, and Bonnie seemed to cross her arms tighter. "I don't have proof," Bonnie said. "But…you know how sometimes you can just feel that someone has been in your space?"

"Yes," Ziva said firmly.

"I could just feel it," Bonnie said. "And things just seemed…off. Like, a book on my nightstand was not exactly where I left it. My drawers were slightly open when I was sure I'd closed them. The toilet seat was up. Things like that."

"Does anyone else have a key to your apartment?" McGee asked.

"Just me," Kavita said. "We're roommates. And I know I didn't do it."

"I've had a lot of calls from blocked numbers," Bonnie went on. "All through the night, and he hangs up when I answer. He's been calling my mom and telling her that I gave him diseases and that I performed all these depraved acts on him. He sent messages to my friends and told them that I'd said these horrible things about them. It's like every week he finds some new and terrible thing to do."

"And then this week he sent her all these photos," Kavita said. She looked at Bonnie. "Show them."

Bonnie moved slowly, as if giving herself time to prepare for seeing them again. She carefully tucked her hair behind her ears, and then leaned over to pick up her handbag off the floor. She sifted through the contents until she pulled out a large envelope and slid it across the table between Tony and Ziva. Ziva took it and upended it instead of touching the seal—they couldn't do a forensic analysis of it like the normally could, and Bonnie and possibly Kavita had already contaminated it, but old habits died hard.

There were about a dozen photos in total. Photos of Bonnie at work. Photos of her walking on the street. Photos of her with Kavita and other women. All taken from a distance. And one final photo with _Whore_ scrawled over it.

"Points for cut through on that one," Bonnie tried to joke.

Tony felt a little sick on her behalf. He looked at Ziva just as she looked over at him, and he read the expression in her eyes. _We're going to nail this guy_.

McGee leaned over the table towards Tony to get a quick look at the photo he was holding. "Did you take these to the police?" he asked.

"They asked if I had proof they were from Eddie," Bonnie said. "I said no, but I knew they were. They sent a cop over to talk to him, but I guess he turned the charm on because they didn't do anything else and told me that it was okay and to just call if he approached me."

"We don't want to wait for that to happen," Kavita said. "This guy is crazy, and we don't think that a friendly visit from a cop is going to make him stop what he's doing."

Bonnie looked across the table, her wide blue eyes vulnerable and desperate. "Can you please help me? I don't want to spend my life being chased by this guy."

Tony opened his mouth to respond, but Ziva got there first.

"Of course," she said. "We will do everything we can to keep you safe."

* * *

_Tuesday, December 15 2015_

Despite how tired he'd been earlier in the evening, Tony couldn't fall asleep that night. He couldn't turn off thoughts of the first time Bonnie Stewart had entered their lives, and when he thought about that he felt panic rise in his chest. He opened his eyes and looked across the pillow at Ziva. She was on her back like him, with her face turned in his direction, but angled downwards. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing steadily, but he knew she wasn't asleep. Her thoughts were probably stuck in the same loop as his.

He'd been arguing with himself for two hours now over what he should do. He knew what he _wanted_ to do. He wanted to go into the office right now and find out where Eddie Hertzog was, then pay him a visit and beat the crap out of him. But it wasn't his case, he had no right, and Ziva would get annoyed with him for taking an action that suggested he didn't think she could handle herself and her cases. He wanted to sit up all night with a gun trained on the door and blast anyone who came into their house, but Ziva would accuse him of being dramatic. He wanted to call Gibbs and tell him he was coming back to the team on this case because he didn't trust that Quinn was good enough to watch her back, but Gibbs would just tell him he needed to let go.

The only thing he thought he'd be able to get away with was rolling over to hug her tightly to him to reassure them both that as of right now, everything was okay. He opened his eyes again to look at her, and he wasn't surprised to see that Ziva was watching him. Sometimes he was _positive_ that she could read his mind.

"It is not that I am scared," she whispered to him, as if they were already halfway through a conversation. She trusted that he knew what she was talking about, and he nodded because he did. "I am just apprehensive."

"About where Eddie might be? Pretty sure he'd still be in jail," he whispered back. That was what was making him 'apprehensive'.

But Ziva shook her head. "No. About finding out that I have not dealt with it."

And suddenly, Tony had something else to worry about. Something bigger. Because Ziva didn't usually indulge in her fear and let it drive her actions. Tony could think of only a couple of times when she had, and Bonnie Stewart's case was one of them. It had scared him almost to death, and the panic in his chest took a firmer grip on him.

But Ziva didn't need to hear that. "I've got your back," he promised her. Whatever happened, he'd be there for her.

Her lips curled in a small smile. "I know."

She rolled over to curl into his side and rest her hand on his chest, and Tony freed his arm from between them to slip it under her neck. The touch made him feel a little better, like he had a bit more control, and he pressed a kiss to her head. Within minutes he heard Ziva's breathing change and he knew she'd finally fallen asleep. But it would take Tony much longer to follow her, because she'd planted a seed in his head and it was growing fast. Ziva may not have completely dealt with their last meeting with Bonnie and Eddie, and now that she'd mentioned it, Tony was sure he hadn't dealt with it either.

In fact, he hadn't properly dealt with _any_ of the times when Ziva had almost died.

* * *

**When I posted the last chapter I was really worried that there weren't any Ziva or Tiva people left around to read it. I stand corrected. Thank you all so much for your reviews and encouragement. I think I managed to respond to most of you who had logged in to review. If I missed you, I'm sorry, and I'll try to catch you this time. I hope you guys liked this one too.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: See below.**

* * *

_Wednesday, 16 December 2015_

"What the hell is a boutonnière?"

Quinn looked up from his computer screen and frowned over at McGee. "Was that something we tagged as evidence?"

McGee shook his head. "No, no. Delilah's just messaged me to ask if I have a color preference for a bou-tonn-i-air," he said, sounding the word out. "But I don't know what that is or what color it's supposed to be."

"_Boutonnière_," Ziva said, correcting his accent. "It is the flower that a man wears in his lapel."

"Ohhh," McGee breathed out, and then paused. "Why should I care what color it is?"

"Is this for the wedding?" Ziva asked. "Or for some other hoity-toity event?"

McGee and Quinn both looked at her like she'd made an offensive or inappropriate comment, and she put her hand to her chest in apology.

"Did I use that term incorrectly?"

"No," McGee said.

"It just sounds weird coming from you," Quinn told her. "Sounds like something Abby'd say."

Ziva relaxed. "Oh. Is it for the wedding?" she asked again.

McGee shook his head. "No, not for ours. We don't really have a date yet. This is for her sister's wedding. She says Petronella doesn't care about quote, 'matchy-matchy wedding crap', end quote."

"I've always liked Petronella," Quinn said.

McGee sent Ziva a smirk, and then looked at Quinn. "You've never met her."

"But I've always liked the sound of her."

"This is literally the first time I've ever mentioned her to you," McGee countered.

Quinn sighed heavily, playing the joke for effect. "Stop picking fights with me, man."

"Some days, it's like Tony never left," McGee said to Ziva.

She smiled back at him, but felt a slight pang in her chest. She lived with Tony. She shared her life with him, and intended to stay with him until death stole one of them away. But she still missed working with him every day.

"When you say that, I can never tell if you're making fun of me or paying me a compliment," Quinn was saying.

"Me neither," McGee admitted.

Ziva's desk phone rang, and she picked it up quickly. "David."

"Come down to autopsy," Gibbs told her. "Ducky's got something for us."

"On my way."

…

Gibbs was already in autopsy when Ziva arrived, standing over Bonnie's pale body as Ducky, still in his blue scrubs, ambled over to his desk. Neither man acknowledged her when she arrived—Gibbs because he didn't have to, Ducky because he probably hadn't heard her come in—but she took position at Bonnie's head. Ducky was in the middle of an anecdote about a trip to Sicily, which Ziva quickly decided was not necessary for her to follow. She steeled herself and looked down at Bonnie. A sheet covered her almost up to her shoulders, but her distinctive tattoo and the top of her Y-incision was still visible, and the bruises around her neck that had looked red at yesterday's crime scene were now dark blue. Ziva swallowed and looked up again, only to find Gibbs watching her intently. She gave him a tight smile and a nod, and then looked over at Ducky who was on his way back to the table, his walking stick in one hand and a folder in the other.

"The _arancini_ from the street vendor is something I still crave 50 years after the fact," he was saying. "I have never found an acceptably authentic substitute." He gestured at Ziva with the folder. "Your _marito_ would know all about that."

Ziva's eyebrow lifted at being married off to Tony. "_Il mio ragazzo_," she corrected, "ate half a donut for dinner last night. Then he passed out halfway through a beer."

Ducky looked back at her with a neutral expression, which was enough to tell her that the news worried him. "He needs to take better care of himself these days."

It wasn't a jibe aimed at her—Ducky was not the kind of man to blame a woman for her partner's bad diet—but she felt guilt over it all the same and resolved to visit the grocery store on her way home. "I know. He tries. He is just busy."

Ducky handed the folder to Gibbs, but addressed Ziva. "Our young probationary agent here had a full stomach when she died. Aubergines, courgettes, fish, cous-cous. Foods popular in Sicilian cooking."

Ziva caught on to why Ducky had brought her Italian partner into the conversation. Although she was certain that Tony's family did not herald from Sicily. Not that it mattered here. "There was no evidence that the kitchen had been recently used to prepare a meal," Ziva told them. "The fridge was mostly full of vegetables. I will have to check with Abby about the contents of the trash, but I am more inclined to think that she may have had lunch at a restaurant."

Gibbs nodded in agreement. "Quinn pulling her bank transactions?"

"He has been working on it this morning," Ziva confirmed. "Abby has her cell phone, so we can check for messages about a lunch date."

"Her mother didn't mention anything when we spoke," Gibbs said. "So, what's the verdict, Duck?"

"Cause of death is asphyxiation," Ducky told them, more or less confirming what they had expected. He pulled back the sheet just far enough to expose one of Bonnie's arms, and ran his finger back and forth in the air above the maze of cuts and bruises. "These were perimortem. The bruises on her wrists and ankles are consistent with her being tied down, and once she was immobilized she was slashed repeatedly with a plain blade along her arms. I count 23 individual cuts, although most are fairly shallow."

"What about her deeper wounds?" Gibbs asked, pointing to one cut above her bicep near her tattooed shoulder.

"Made with the same blade as the slashes," Ducky said. "I'd estimate it to be no more than three inches long."

"Like a paring knife?" Ziva asked, thinking about the knife block in the kitchen.

Ducky considered that before nodding. "Yes, that would fit."

"There was a paring knife missing from the kitchen, but we did not find it at the scene."

"I'd look harder for it," Ducky advised.

"So, she was tied down, slashed and stabbed, and then strangled?" Ziva thought aloud. "The pools of blood in the kitchen suggest that is where the attack took place. How did she get from the kitchen to the living room? Did he carry her?"

Gibbs didn't respond to that, but his eyes told her it was something they'd have to consider. "Trace evidence, Duck?"

"It has been sent to Abby," he replied. "Carpet fibers, clothing fibers, a few hairs. The usual, from first glance."

"Anything under her nails?" Ziva asked.

"Nothing obvious," Ducky said. "Abby has the clippings."

Ziva looked down at Bonnie again and felt a flash of irrational anger with her. "She does not appear to have defensive wounds." If she had trained to be an NCIS agent, why hadn't she fought? Ziva knew that Bonnie had it in her.

"No," Ducky confirmed. "Whether that was because she was threatened and was compliant, or whether she was simply taken by surprise, I can't say. That is for you to determine. But I can tell you that the attack probably lasted at least an hour. Some of the slashes had stopped bleeding before she died."

Ziva sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Tied up and tortured for an hour," she murmured to herself. "I wonder if she knew it was coming, or if she thought she would get away."

"Sexual assault?" Gibbs asked Ducky.

"Mercifully, no."

"All right. Keep us posted on anything else," Gibbs told him, and nudged Ziva away from the table to lead her to the elevator.

"Thank you, Doctor," Ziva told Ducky, and the elderly M.E. nodded and gave her a kind smile before she walked through the morgue doors.

Gibbs was holding the lift door for her, so she quickened her step to join him in the car. He hit the button for the third floor, and they'd risen just a few feet before he reached over and flipped the emergency brake. Ziva gripped the handrail on instinct—ever since she and Tony had been stuck in the elevator when Harper Dearing bombed the NCIS building a few years ago, she got a little nervous when Gibbs sprung a surprise elevator meeting on her—but quickly righted herself and met his eyes in the dim light.

"Gibbs?"

"Anything you want to talk about?" he asked.

Ziva blinked at him as she tried to work out what he was getting at, and then held her hand up to stop the idea she thought might have sprung in his head. "Tony and I are not married," she told him with a chuckle. "Or engaged. That was just Ducky—"

"That's not what I'm talking about," Gibbs cut in, rolling his eyes over the slightest of smiles. "This case, Ziva. What's on your mind?"

She felt her cheeks flush at her mistake, but carried on as if marrying her boyfriend wasn't on her mind these days. "It bothers me," she admitted. "I know Tony and McGee and I helped Bonnie when she asked us to. And if her ex-boyfriend is still in prison then he did not do this to her, and that is some kind of morbid comfort. But I feel bad about it."

"You can't carry that on your shoulders, Ziva," Gibbs told her, taking a step towards her. "Think of how many people this team has helped in ten years. We can't be responsible for all those people for the rest of their lives."

She nodded easily. "I know. It just…sucks," she settled on.

"Yeah."

She tried to hold his gaze, but shame sent her eyes to the floor. "I am also disappointed in myself for being disappointed in her."

"What did she do?"

Ziva gave a bitter chuckle. "It is that she _didn't_ fight harder. No defensive wounds."

Gibbs took another step towards her and lowered his voice. "You don't know that she didn't," he reminded her, trying to keep her on track. "We don't have all the facts yet."

He was right, but the awful feeling didn't go away. "Gibbs, I just…If it were me? I would have taken a piece of him before he took me." And when it _was_ her, she took strips off his wrists with her fingernails.

"Not everyone has your fortitude, Ziva," Gibbs said gently. "Or your will."

She chuckled bitterly again and leaned back against the wall. She could think of plenty of times when her will ebbed away and someone else—Gibbs, Tony, McGee—had to save her butt. But she didn't want to talk about that now.

Gibbs eyed her. "You going to be able to work this case?"

Her eyes snapped back up to his again with surprise. She was offended that he had even asked. "Yes, of course," she said firmly.

"That's what I want to hear," he said, and leaned over to start the elevator again.

They rose a few more feet as Ziva argued with herself over whether or not to divulge more information about their previous case with Bonnie. She didn't want to revisit some parts of that case—the parts that she had confided to Tony that she hadn't properly dealt with—but she wanted to be honest with him. It was Gibbs, for God's sake. He wasn't just her boss, but also a father figure, and a man she trusted with her life. She wanted to tell him before anyone else did.

Impulsively, she reached around him and gripped the handrail before flipping the emergency brake again. Gibbs turned his head slowly to look at her, one eyebrow arched in question. Ziva clasped her hands in front of her and chewed her lip.

"What is it?" he asked.

She took a deep breath and just went for it. "Bonnie's ex-boyfriend, Eddie. He attacked me. He managed to get the upper hand despite my best efforts and—" She stopped abruptly as she was hit with an epiphany. "Hmm. Perhaps that is why I am disappointed in Bonnie. Misplaced anger at myself."

"You should let go of both," Gibbs advised her. "And we don't know it was Eddie."

"No," she accepted. "Anyway, I just wanted you to know it happened before you found out from a background search."

He watched her closely for a moment, no doubt trying to determine how much it bothered her. Either she was getting better at deceiving him or he was letting her off the hook, because all Gibbs did was touch her arm briefly before turning to start the elevator again, and they got back to work.

* * *

_Wednesday, June 26 2013_

"Rosie? Hi, my name is Ziva. We spoke on the phone."

The young woman who looked back at Ziva and Tony from around her apartment door could have been Bonnie Stewart's sister. With blonde hair, blue eyes and delicate features, she looked younger than what she probably was and positively fragile. But she didn't shy away from the strangers on her doorstep. Instead, she opened the door wider and gestured at them to come in.

"Yeah, hi," she said. "Sorry about the mess."

Ziva barely looked around at the living room. She wasn't that interested in Rosie's living conditions tonight. She gestured at Tony. "This is my partner, Tony DiNozzo," she said before it occurred to her that she couldn't really introduce him that way anymore. They were still coworkers, but not really _partners_. Were they?

Rosie cared about Tony's title about as much as Ziva cared about the books and magazines strewn across the carpet. "Hey," she said to him with a nod of her head, and then jerked her thumb at a table and chairs off the kitchen. "We can talk over here."

Ziva and Tony followed her across the apartment and sat down on mismatched dining chairs.

"We appreciate you agreeing to talk to us," Ziva told her.

"Are you cops or something?" Rosie asked.

"Private sector," Tony told her. None of them were that comfortable with being tagged as private investigators yet. Not when they'd all spent so long looking down on those who were in business for themselves.

"Okay," Rosie said cautiously. "But you want to talk about Eddie?"

Ziva pulled out a small notebook and flipped to a blank page. "Yes. We are investigating Mr Hertzog for a client, and during a routine background search we found that you took out a restraining order against him last year."

Rosie brought one knee up to her chest and rested her heel on her chair seat. "Is that, like, something anyone can find out?" she asked.

"It's difficult," Tony told her, trying to put her sudden worries at ease. "We have a background in law enforcement so the channels are a little more open to us."

"Oh."

"Can you tell me what prompted the restraining order?" Ziva asked gently.

Rosie ran a hand through her hair. "Well, he was a creepy weirdo asshole," she said.

Ziva smiled as though she understood the type—and she did—and encouraged her to share more.

"We met at a party maybe two years ago," Rosie said. "Dated for a while and he was pretty normal right up until he wasn't. Out of nowhere he started getting really possessive and wanted to know where I was all the time." She gave a humorless laugh. "Actually, he didn't want me to go _anywhere_ if he wasn't there."

"He was controlling," Tony said.

Rosie rolled her eyes as if that was an understatement. "Oh, yeah. Then he started getting mean. He put me down, called me names. If I cried he'd call me _worse_ names."

"Did you tell anyone?" Ziva asked.

Rosie dropped her eyes and shook her head. "No," she said softly. "Not then. I was embarrassed. I thought it was my fault. He convinced me it was my fault."

Ziva looked over to Tony, and he gave her a small nod. The story sounded very familiar, and that was good news for them, if not for Rosie and Bonnie. The background search they and McGee had started on Eddie Hertzog after Bonnie left their office had been far more labor intensive than they were used to. They no longer had access to the databases that they'd taken for granted at NCIS, so they'd needed to rely on public records, lots of phone calls and niche Google searches. When they found the restraining order against Hertzog it had been a major breakthrough for them, but they'd tried not to get their hopes up that it would lead them to anything useful. After all, they weren't federal agents anymore and they didn't carry the badges that had often been the key that got them through the door with witnesses. When they'd found Rosie's name, Ziva had been very careful to sound trustworthy when she'd called to ask for her help. They were lucky Rosie had agreed, but they still had to tread carefully and protect this witness. It sounded like she had useful information for them.

"Men like him are good at twisting things to their advantage," Ziva said softly.

"If I only knew that then," Rosie said wistfully.

"I'm sorry to ask you this," Tony said, softening his voice. "But did it go beyond verbal abuse?"

Rosie got a resigned look on her face as she nodded. "Yeah. When I tried to stand up to him. Eddie doesn't like rejection, and he sure as hell doesn't like people trying to assert themselves over him. I went to the police when he threw me into a wall and broke my arm because I said I didn't feel like going out with him one night."

"I'm sorry," Ziva said.

Rosie shrugged. "Thanks, I guess."

"Was he arrested?" Tony asked.

She shook her head, and then had to brush hair out of her eyes. "Nope. They interviewed him but one of his friends gave him an alibi and said he'd been at his place all night. Went so far as to say that I was obsessed with Eddie and that _I_ should be arrested." She laughed bitterly. "I don't think the cops bought it. But they didn't charge him either."

"So you got a restraining order," Ziva said.

"Yeah. It still took a while for him to pay attention to it. He was good at skirting the edges of violating it. He'd send me these creepy photos of me when I went out, but I couldn't ever prove they were from him." Rosie paused and frowned. "I have no idea why he eventually gave up on me and walked away, but he did. It was like one morning I woke up and I suddenly had my life back."

"When was that?" Tony asked.

Rosie bit her lip as she thought it over. "I can't be totally sure, but I think it was only, like, December."

Tony and Ziva shared another look. December was when Bonnie said she met Eddie. Had his interest in Rosie disappeared as soon as he thought he found another woman to try to control.

Rosie noticed the look. "What? Is he stalking some other woman?"

Ziva didn't want to share the details of Bonnie's case. But she did want to set Rosie's mind at ease. "We are not sure," she lied. "But I think you can be sure that Eddie Hertzog won't bother you again."

* * *

_Wednesday, 16 December 2015_

"Eddie Hertzog is still in prison," McGee reported as Gibbs and Ziva returned from the morgue. "I just talked to the prosecutor in his case. He's not up for parole until next year."

Ziva stopped by her desk as a glimmer of relief tugged at her chest. "Are you sure?"

McGee gave her a knowing, supportive smile. "I checked," he assured her. "And double checked."

She blew out a discreet sigh of relief, and walked around her desk to sit down. "Well. We can strike one person off the list."

"So, who does that leave us with?" Gibbs wanted to know.

"Her mother did not mention anyone hanging around when you spoke to her yesterday?" Ziva asked him.

Gibbs shook his head. "What other family does she have?"

"A sister in Sacramento," McGee said.

"And her best friend, Kavita," Ziva added. "They used to live together. They were very close."

"Get back in touch with her," Gibbs told her.

Ziva nodded and turned to her computer to find Kavita's contact details. Gibbs took a step towards Quinn's desk.

"Quinn, go down and see Abby," he instructed. "Find out what help she needs processing everything we brought in yesterday. I want to move faster."

"Sure thing," Quinn said, and got up straight away to head off to the elevator.

Gibbs turned and faced McGee. "Abby's got Bonnie's phone, but I want you to get hold of her Internet activity. I want to know if she's been talking to anyone in particular. Or ignoring anyone. Look her up on the Facebook thing."

"On it," McGee said, and got down to work.

With his three agents distracted with tasks, Gibbs took off towards the elevator. He needed to have a quick coffee date.

…

Tony pulled his overcoat collar up against the chill as he walked the path through the Navy Yard. He always felt that these meetings with Gibbs—they usually had them at least once a week—were so clandestine. Two men in overcoats sitting on a park bench off the beaten track. In this town a passerby could assume they were trading in secrets. The reality was that Tony usually complained that his team had not developed a psychic connection to him yet and still needed to be told what he wanted them to do, and Gibbs usually wanted to talk a case over with his former senior field agent. Tony liked it when Gibbs did that. He still felt the ache of loss from leaving the team that had been his home and family for 13 years. Of course the team still _was_ his family—and Ziva in particular was literally in his home every night and would officially become his family one day—but he felt removed from them these days. Meeting with Gibbs like this made him feel like he was still a necessary member of the extended team. And although Gibbs would probably never say it, Tony knew the boss man really did still need him around. He'd played the part of Gibbs' safety net for more than a decade, and while McGee had shown the same skills as SFA, Gibbs was a man who liked routine. Tony was his routine, even if some of the steps had changed.

Gibbs was already sitting on the bench they used as a meeting place, and Tony was pleased to see there was a second cup of coffee in his gloved hand. He took a seat and the coffee before they properly acknowledged each other, and Gibbs waited until Tony had taken a healthy sip before looking over at him and speaking up.

"It's going to snow tonight," he told Tony.

Tony looked up at the grey sky. He feared Gibbs was right about that. "I'll sure look forward to digging my car out tomorrow morning."

"Should've bought something in the suburbs with a garage," Gibbs told him.

"Tell Ziva," Tony replied. "Technically, the house is hers."

Gibbs swung his head around to look at Tony with growing interest. "You got any good schools around there?"

"There's a private school a few blocks away. Public is a bit further."

Gibbs sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "It's handy if they're within walking distance."

Tony felt a little flutter in the part of his chest that wanted to get with the baby-making already, but avoided any serious discussion about it. "Any kid of Ziva's will probably be capable of walking 50 miles thought a snowstorm on their own by the time they turn three."

A fleeting smile of affection touched Gibbs' face. "Maybe. Can't imagine you two being that hands off, though."

Tony sighed quietly to himself. He thought Gibbs was probably right about that. "So, what's up?" he asked, moving the conversation along.

"Ziva told you about our case?"

Tony nodded heavily. "Bonnie Stewart," he said. When Gibbs called him to meet, Tony had an inkling the case was the reason for it. "But you want to talk about Ziva."

Gibbs looked him in the eye, and Tony noticed that the tip of his nose and his cheeks were turning red in the cold. "She gonna deal with this okay?"

Tony frowned, not keen on being stuck in the middle of the two of them. "What did she say?"

"That it wouldn't be a problem for her."

Tony nodded. "So, why would you question that?"

They held eye contact for a few seconds with Gibbs trying to force Tony into filling the silence, and Tony determined to back his partner. Eventually, Gibbs gave in.

"I'm worried," he admitted.

It felt strange to hear that from him, but Tony conceded that Gibbs had been more honest and open with him since he left the team. They were both team leaders now and closer to being on equal footing. And to Tony's surprise, Gibbs seemed to respect that. Unfortunately, he wasn't respecting the duty Tony had to keeping Ziva's business in confidence.

"Have you talked to her about it?" he asked, making it clear that it should be Gibbs' first step.

"She's holding back from me," Gibbs replied bluntly.

"Gibbs—"

"I ain't here to gossip, DiNozzo," Gibbs said. "She's bothered by it. Too much. And I got two other agents to think about."

Tony leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and hung his head. This was one of those grey areas that he didn't like being in. But another part of him (one that he wouldn't divulge to his beloved unless she asked him directly) was relieved that Gibbs was onto it. It had been clear to him last night that Ziva had already let it bother her (not that he blamed her), and he wanted to have her back while she worked the case. It wasn't practical for him to do that these days, so he needed the next best thing. And that was Gibbs.

"We met Bonnie a couple of months after Ziva's father died and she and I were in a weird kind of place." He stopped and shot a quick smirk at Gibbs. "Imagine that."

Gibbs lifted an eyebrow in acknowledgement. The two of them spent eight years in a weird kind of place.

"You'd gone, we'd quit," Tony went on. "And I think Ziva really needed something to make her feel normal again. Normal for her is protecting people, so she got a bit, well, _intense_ with that particular job." He paused for an introspective moment. "I think you might actually get her to admit to it these days. Hell, if it happened now she might actually ask for help. Or, at least, she'd accept help if I forced it on her. I think I might have to this time. But working the case will be good for her, I think. She'll work through what she needs to." He paused. "I might have problems."

Gibbs frowned at him, not following what he was saying. "What are you talking about?"

Tony eyed him carefully. "What did she tell you about that case?"

"She said she was attacked," Gibbs said, getting to the point. "But it sounded like it wasn't a big deal."

It was clear that Gibbs didn't buy that. They were having this conversation for that very fact. Tony felt nausea roll though his stomach, and he put the remainder of his coffee on the ground beside his feet.

"Yeah," he confirmed weakly. "She was attacked in my apartment. We were using it as a kind of safe house for Bonnie while we were trying to gather evidence on her ex for stalking her. Ziva went over to pick her up. Bonnie wasn't there—McGee had taken her out and the word between him, Ziva and me got confused. But Bonnie's ex followed Ziva in. Demanded to know where Bonnie was and threatened her to get out of their business. As you can imagine, Ziva didn't take kindly to that. Somehow it ended up in a physical fight."

"Ziva said he got the upper hand," Gibbs said gently.

Tony nodded as the nausea turned to a stab of panic that reflected what he'd felt at the time. "He hit her with a vase. Did you know I had a vase in my apartment back then?" he asked Gibbs, but didn't wait for an answer. "I didn't have a clue. But now I know I did, because he smashed it into her head." He paused as he clasped his hands together tightly. "She doesn't remember exactly what happened then, but we think he hit her head against the floor or the kitchen counter or something a few times. She was really dazed but she remembers that he got her down on the ground and got on top of her, and…um…" He paused for another moment to swallow down the lump in his throat. "She started to panic. After Somalia, you know…" He couldn't make himself say it. After all the years that had passed and all the therapy he'd had—alone and with Ziva—he still couldn't make himself say the horrific word when it related to her. Even thinking of it made tears prick the back of his eyes, and if he wasn't holding his hands together so hard he knew they would be shaking.

"Yeah," Gibbs said roughly, saving Tony from having to explain himself.

Tony cleared his throat and blinked, and forced himself to move on from the thought. "She panicked and she struggled," he told Gibbs. "The more she struggled, the harder he fought her, until he started to strangle her. And she passed out. Eddie must've thought he'd killed her then, because he ran." He blew out a long breath that turned into a white cloud in the cold. "I came home probably only a few minutes later and found her lying on my kitchen floor. Bleeding from the head, marks all over her and her clothes all torn and bunched up. She wasn't moving. And I thought she was dead too."

He took a shaky breath and shot Gibbs a self-conscious glance. "Last night it occurred to me that I haven't fully dealt with it yet. I thought I had, but now I just want to be sick. So I can listen to her talk her way through it, but I'll have to take breaks every few minutes so I can go to the bathroom and puke."

There was a long silence then, and Tony thought Gibbs might be dealing with his disappointment over Tony not being able to step up and be a dependable partner when he was needed. But when he chanced a look over at him again, he found Gibbs looking away across the yard with a look of hurt on his face. Not the kind of hurt that a person felt at being let down or excluded from a secret, but the kind a father felt when his kids had been hurt and there was nothing he could do about it. Tony looked away quickly.

"I didn't know," Gibbs finally said, and he sounded like he was giving Tony an apology for the fact.

Tony shook his head. "It was while you were away," he said. "Months before you got back. And Ziva has a tendency to bounce back from these kinds of experiences like they never happened. You know, until they come back to bite her in the ass again."

He heard Gibbs sigh heavily before he got back on track with the case. "Bonnie was strangled to death," he told Tony.

"Yeah. Ziva suspected so."

"Her ex is still in prison," Gibbs went on, delivering Tony a sense of incredible relief. "McGee just confirmed it."

"Good," Tony sighed, and sat up straight again. "You know, I almost came back to work last night to check that for myself."

Gibbs smirked knowingly. "Uh-huh. You know, it's not your case."

"I'm aware. But I'm ready to come off the bench if you need me."

A few more moments passed in silence until Gibbs turned another, wider smirk on him. "I heard you found a foot."

Tony held up one index finger. "One foot. Just one. And some dog tags that definitely don't belong to the poor guy who's either dead now or has a hell of a limp."

"Sounds like an interesting case you got there, DiNozzo."

"Time will tell."

Gibbs threw back the rest of his coffee and then the two of them stood up and started walking back to the NCIS building. They had made half the trip in silence before Tony found his tongue.

"You gotta watch her back, Gibbs. I've got a feeling it's going to get rocky." He held up a hand. "I'm not saying protect her, because she doesn't need it and she'll kill us both if she finds out. But just…watch her."

Gibbs tossed his coffee cup in a trashcan as they passed by, and then gave Tony a solemn nod and recited the line so often aimed at him in the past. "On it, boss."

* * *

**A/N: Thank you again for your interest in this story. I'm blown away, and hope you continue to enjoy it.**


	4. Chapter 4

_Friday, 28 June 2013 _

Two days after Bonnie Stewart hired them, the team sat in Ziva's dining room with papers and notepads spread out between them and three laptops running at capacity. Their early success in finding Rosie, another of Eddie Hertzog's exes, had not been a harbinger for how the rest of the case would run. Without all the tools they were used to having at their disposal, everything was taking much longer to do and information was harder to come by.

They had split the task into three: Ziva had been talking to Bonnie's friends and co-workers to find out if and when they remembered seeing Eddie hanging around, or had been approached by him themselves. McGee was searching through records (including some Ziva and Tony knew he was probably not supposed to be accessing as a private citizen) to try to build a background picture of Eddie, from exes to finances, assets, friends and employment history. And Tony was using that information to try to nail down Eddie's schedule and compare it to Bonnie's, and work out when he was most likely to contact her or harass her.

So far they had managed to confirm Bonnie's claims that Eddie hung around outside her work and made inappropriate calls to her friends and family. They knew that Bonnie and Rosie were not the only women he had stalked, and that he had restraining orders taken out against him by two other women in the past, but both had lapsed. They had his driver's license, license plate, a rough daily schedule, a list of his friends and information on his impressive Internet porn subscriptions. They knew what route he took to his job as a financial planner, and they knew that when he was 22 he'd been arrested, charged, fined and made to complete an anger management program for slapping a waitress in the face at a Hooters restaurant. What they needed now was a plan for collecting enough evidence to get him arrested, charged and jailed for stalking Bonnie Stewart.

"I hate to say it," McGee started.

"Then don't," Tony implored.

McGee ignored him. "The best way to catch this guy is going to be through following him ourselves."

Tony and Ziva groaned in unison.

"We work for ourselves now," Tony protested. "We make our own rules. And one rule should be no stakeouts."

"We can't make a rule against stakeouts," McGee argued.

"Can't we just go talk to him and put the fear of God into him?" Tony tried, but he was fighting a loosing battle.

"He does not strike me as the kind of person who is easily intimidated," Ziva said. "And I hate stakeouts too, but I think it is our best starting point. We cannot just haul him in for questioning."

"What if we just break into his house?" Tony suggested. "If he's stalking her, he's got to have evidence of that somewhere."

"I am not saying we cannot do that," Ziva said.

McGee frowned. "Wait, what?"

"But we need to follow him to make sure he will not come home and find us there."

"We can't break into his house," McGee said sternly. "Are you crazy? We can't even do that as federal agents without a warrant."

"We won't get caught, McGee," Tony argued. "And Ziva can break in without breaking a lock. He'll never know."

"He won't know until we use stolen evidence to build a case against him," McGee explained patiently, even though his friends were entirely aware of the fact. "And then the evidence will be inadmissible."

"So we won't take it from the premises," Tony said, goading McGee for the fun of it now. "Besides, what's the difference between breaking into his house and breaking into whatever database you're in right now without permission."

McGee bristled and turned his laptop screen away from the others. "This isn't illegal, exactly," he said.

Tony didn't buy it. "No different," he said. "We need to break in."

McGee blinked at him in disbelief. "Are you crazy?" he repeated. "Really, I want to know."

"No, I'm a wild card," Tony said.

Ziva held up her hands between them. "Okay, okay. We cannot break in. We can probably be a little creative with how we enter his apartment…"

"Ziva," McGee said warningly.

"…but we will need to start with following him," she went on. She looked at Tony. "We will let you choose which shift you want."

Tony sighed and resigned himself to the plan. "Morning."

"Okay," McGee said, sounding more comfortable. "Make sure you take a camera."

They went back to work then until the doorbell rang. Ziva looked up at the clock. It was past seven, so she supposed it could be Abby coming to check in and say hello. She pushed her chair back from the table, but McGee got to his feet as well and stepped towards the hallway.

"I got it," he said, looking nervous. "It's for me."

"Who's coming to see you at this hour?" Tony wanted to know.

McGee hesitated, and Tony and Ziva looked at each other. They had the same thought and looked back at McGee.

"Delilah?" they asked in unison.

McGee sighed and his shoulders rolled forward in defeat. "Can you both please just try to be normal?" he begged. "I like her, and I don't want her to run away because you start cleaning knives at the table," he gestured at Ziva, "and you make bad jokes and leer at her."

"Hey!" Tony protested, getting to his feet. "I do _not_ make bad jokes!"

Ziva touched Tony's arm, pulling him back from going into a full flight of, well, Tony-ness. She looked at McGee with her most innocent face. "I think it is wonderful that you changed your mind about introducing us," she said. "I promise we will make her feel welcome."

"Is your young lady friend going to join us for dinner, Tim?" Tony asked.

"You've got to be kidding," McGee returned. "We're going out. She's just picking me up." He disappeared down the hallway towards the door, but Tony called after him.

"You know, in my day it was customary for the man to pick the woman up on a date." He paused and waited for a reply, but when none was forthcoming he looked at Ziva with unrestrained glee. "Okay, think fast. What are we going to do to him?"

Ziva smiled, because she _was_ tempted to go down the prank route right now. But she was also feeling melancholic. After so much pain in her life lately, she just wanted to see a happy ending. And if McGee really liked Delilah, then she wanted the happy ending to be his. Because honestly, she didn't know if she would ever get one for herself.

"Let's just be nice," she suggested.

Tony considered that. "Yeah, that'll really put him off," he said thoughtfully, completely misunderstanding what Ziva was getting at.

"No, I mean genuinely nice," she said. "He likes her. Let him have a happy ending."

Tony regarded her closely and some of the humor left his eyes. "I thought you didn't believe in happy endings."

She gave him a bittersweet smile, and couldn't help but think of the hurt she'd seen on his face when he had found out about what she had done in Israel with Adam. "I want to," she said thickly.

Tony kept watching her closely with soft eyes that made her throat tighten. He stepped over to her so his chest was less than a foot from hers, making her tip her head back so she could keep eye contact. The familiar and much-loved smell of him filled her head and her heart started racing like it always did when he got close to her like this. But she didn't have a clue what he was going to do, not even when he reached out a finger to entwine with hers.

"Ziva, look," he started in a low voice. "What's happened between us lately, I just want—" But the rest of what he was going to say was swallowed by McGee and Delilah walking into the kitchen. Ziva wanted to kick them and kiss them at the same time.

"Okay, they've promised me they'll be good," McGee told Delilah. "Well, Ziva did, anyway."

Tony and Ziva quickly parted and put smiles on their faces, and came forward to greet the striking brunette with green eyes McGee was presenting.

"Guys, this is Delilah," McGee introduced. "Delilah, meet Tony and Ziva. My former co-workers. And current co-workers."

Ziva stepped forward to shake Delilah's hand. "It is very nice to meet you," she said. "Tim has told us, well, not a lot about you. But what he has said has been very complimentary."

Delilah chuckled. "That's nice to know. He's told me a lot more about you both."

"Probably not as complimentary," Tony said, and shook her hand. "It's nice to meet you finally."

"You too. You know, I have to tell you, I think it's great that you're doing this."

Tony and Ziva shared a look that confirmed neither of them understood what she was talking about, and then looked back at her.

"What's that?" Tony asked.

Delilah gestured between the three of them, and around the dining room. "This. Sticking together."

"Oh," Ziva said, catching on.

"We know no other way," Tony told her with a smile.

Ziva raised her eyebrows at the unexpected poetry coming from Tony's mouth. He gave her a knowing wink and a smile that made her heart begin to race again.

"Can you two please continue to be nice and refrain from telling lies if I leave you all together for a few minutes?" McGee asked.

"Of course," Tony and Ziva replied.

McGee paused, clearly rethinking his decision to leave. But Delilah gave his wrist a quick squeeze.

"Relax," she told him. "I can hold my own."

McGee nodded and then gave the other two warning looks before he turned and jogged towards the staircase.

"Would you like a drink?" Tony offered Delilah.

"Oh, thanks, but no. We're about to head out to dinner."

"Ah. Off to Paris in a private jet?"

"Doubt it," Delilah said with a smile. "Unless you guys bought a private jet for your business."

Tony's head swung around to look at Ziva, and she jumped at being caught staring at him. "Ziva? Did we end up getting that private jet I wanted?"

"Not yet," she replied.

Tony nodded and looked at her curiously. He had definitely caught her staring. "What?"

"Nothing," she said with a shake of her head, and then looked away. "You just sounded…poetic."

A hint of a warm but teasing smile tugged at his lips. "You don't draw a line between me and poetic?"

She sent him a look of apology. "Not usually. Not like that."

Tony sat down at the table and gathered together some of the documents that they'd spread out in a half-hearted attempt to clean up. "I'm extremely offended," he told her lightly.

Ziva looked at Delilah and rolled her eyes at Tony's joke before sitting down with him. "No, you are not."

Tony looked up and between them, but mainly focused on Ziva. "You know, I'm enjoying this moment Ms David."

"Why?"

"Because you are the one who's all about books," he said. "And yet, you don't know that what I said is a quote from a book."

Ziva frowned with interest and gave him a small smile. "Mr DiNozzo, are you quoting a book at me?"

Tony's smile quickly stretched across his face at the shared memory before he reeled it in again. "No. It's actually a sonnet by Pablo Neruda."

Ziva felt her smile grow as she allowed herself to be drawn in further. "Really?"

Tony leaned forward with his elbows on the table and dipped his head towards her. They had both more or less forgotten about their audience. "I don't remember all of it," he admitted. "But it's something like _I love you without knowing how or why or from where; I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this._" He paused as Ziva hung on his words, and then broke into another smile. "And then it's something about having the same hands and eyes and falling asleep."

Ziva continued to stare at him as the recital hit her dead centre in the heart. But when she realized he was watching her for a reaction, she quickly broke eye contact, swept her hair behind her ear and pulled the nearest laptop closer to her. She heard Tony chuckle.

"Oh, she goes straight to the Internet to confirm," he said lightly.

She glanced up to see him trying to share a smile with Delilah, and her cheeks grew warm. "I like it," she told him softly. "I want to read the rest of it."

Tony's eyes lingered on her face for a moment before he turned back to Delilah. "So, how did you and McGee meet?" he asked her. "He didn't really go into detail."

"Comic convention," Delilah told him.

"Ohhh," Tony said as if it all made sense.

"Tony," Ziva said warningly. He swung his head back to look at her again. _Don't_, she mouthed at him.

_I'm not_, he mouthed back, and once again returned his attention to Delilah. "We met McGee when a case took us to the circus," he told her. "He was an apprentice lion tamer at the time, and one of those big cats had gone crazy and taken off the head of a sailor on shore leave."

"Tony!" Ziva said with exasperation.

But Delilah just laughed. "Wow. An apprentice lion tamer," she repeated, playing along. "You'd have to be pretty brave to do that job."

"He wasn't allowed near the animals yet," Tony told her, and turned to Ziva again. "What have you found there, sweetcheeks?"

Ziva turned the laptop screen so he could see it too. "You were right," she said, and scanned the sonnet again. "_Where I does not exist, nor you; so close that your hand on my chest is my hand; so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep._"

"Told you," he said with a wink. "I have a head for quotes."

She gave him a smile that felt more affectionate than she'd intended for it to be. "Yes. You do."

He gave her a soft smile. "You know, I think more sonnets should feature nap time."

"They are truly underrated."

McGee's footsteps thudded up the hallway and a moment later he appeared in the doorway to the dining room. "Everything still okay?"

"Sure," Delilah said. "Tony's just reciting love sonnets."

McGee looked at Tony, puzzled. Tony clicked his tongue and winked.

"Yeah, I'm actually not that surprised," McGee admitted. "We're going to take off. You two okay with the rest of this?" He gestured at the documents on the table.

"It's under control," Tony said. "Go out. Have fun, you crazy kids."

"Nice to meet you," Delilah said again, and then she and McGee left them alone.

They waited until they'd heard the front door close before speaking again.

"She seems okay," Tony said.

"Yes. But we always think that about his girlfriends, and then they always turn out to be using him."

Tony pursed his lips. "Okay. Sometimes we get it wrong."

Ziva smiled and started gathering the rest of the papers on the table. "Do you want to stay for dinner?" she asked, feeling shy about it for some reason. "Or are you heading home?"

"Dinner sounds good," he said. "If you don't mind me staying."

Ziva smiled and shook her head. "Of course not, Tony. You are welcome here whenever you want. You have a bedroom here," she pointed out.

"And you are good company," he said. "Let's cook."

…

They threw together a quick dinner of penne with pesto and olives. The conversation was light and safe and mostly centered on McGee and Delilah, and on the small repairs and renovations that Ziva thought needed to be made to the house. The main bathroom upstairs that Tony and McGee had to share whenever they were both staying had cracked tiles around the bath, and the exhaust fan needed servicing. The basement office was cold even in the warmth of summer, which was fine for now but it would need to be fixed by fall. There were a few loose floorboards in the hallway downstairs, and Ziva hated the tiles in the laundry. Nor was she sold on the configuration of the basement office. It was too cramped, even though there was a lot of space down there. And she was convinced that the kitchen needed a complete renovation. It wasn't Tony's house, so it didn't really matter what he thought about it. But he told her anyway.

"Ziva, does it really need a renovation?" he asked. "Or are you just looking for something to focus your attention on?"

She looked at him like she couldn't believe he was questioning it, and then crossed to the far end of the counter to point to a hole in the kickboard. "That needs to be replaced," she said. "Rodents and insects can get in."

"So, just replace the kickboard," he said obviously, and started spooning pasta into bowls for them. "No need to redo the entire kitchen."

"But it is ugly," she insisted.

Tony glanced around the room. Yeah, it was a little dated. But he didn't think it was _ugly_. "How much does a kitchen renovation cost? Fifteen grand?"

"I could do it for less," she said. "If we do some of the work ourselves."

"We?" he repeated, balking at the suggestion.

She grinned and rejoined him by the stove. "Scared of getting dirty?"

"No," he assured her. "I remember I got very dirty helping to paint this pace a couple of weeks ago. I'm just worried about losing a thumb. Or an arm."

"Then you do not have to use the saw," she said.

He gave her a dubious look, and then handed her a bowl of pasta. They walked back through the kitchen into the dining room and sat down for a very casual dinner.

"This isn't even my house," he told her. "I just mooch off you sometimes."

Ziva frowned. "What is mooch?"

"Live here for free, eat all your food, use your electricity, water and Internet, and hog your TV."

"Oh." She pushed pasta around her bowl. "I said you could. That both of you could while things are tight. And technically you own about ten per cent of the house each."

Tony snorted. That was kind of true. When Ziva told then she was buying the house and said they should use it to run the business out of, Tony and McGee had both chipped in ten grand. Buying their way into the business, they'd said. Tony still had a little money in reserve to live off. McGee had a little more. But all three of them had to hope this private investigation gig would start paying the bills soon. Tony was already considering giving up the lease on his apartment and moving to Ziva's full time. Perhaps putting money into this house hadn't been the best idea financially for him right now. But morally, he was completely fine with it.

"I call dibs on the living room, then," he said. "You know, if you really want to redo the kitchen you just need to wait until Gibbs gets back. His cabin is just about done. He'll need a new project."

She smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes that Tony felt too. "When he comes back," she repeated. "What if he never comes back?"

"He will," Tony told her, although he had no way of being sure about it. And Ziva knew it.

"How do you know?" she asked him.

Tony shrugged. "Because he knows no other way," he said, hoping to get another smile out of her. And he did, but it was small. And she didn't look at all convinced or reassured.

"Tony—"

"Ziva, listen," he said, and put his hand over hers. "Gibbs isn't going to abandon us for good. That's not his way."

"I know he would not," she replied. "That is not what I am worried about, Tony. None of us is there to watch his back. _That_ is what worries me."

In truth, it was what worried Tony as well. But he didn't want to tell her that. He didn't want to give her idea the legs she was looking for. Because he knew Ziva. He knew that she had probably been thinking about going searching for Gibbs on her own ever since they'd found out he'd 'gone on assignment'. And more importantly, he knew that when Ziva went searching on her own, things went bad. Really bad. Death, questionable kills and broken laws bad. They'd only just gotten through an incredibly rough patch sparked by her single-minded desire for revenge, and Tony was not willing to go through it again. He saw his role now as being Ziva's barrier to doing something stupid out of worry. He had to talk her down.

"Ziva, Vance is not going to let Gibbs go out there without back up," he told her. "He's not."

Ziva seemed to waver, as if she wanted to believe him instead of what her gut told her. "Ducky does not know where he is," she pointed out softly. "He has not heard anything. Nor has Abby or Fornell or—"

"You've never heard of black ops?" he challenged gently.

Ziva sighed and dropped her eyes to his hand on hers. It was a sign to him that this particular bout of burgeoning craziness had left her.

"It's going to be okay," he assured her. "And when he comes back, he can build you some new kitchen cabinetry."

Ziva smiled and squeezed his hand. "Okay. I will hold off on buying a new kitchen."

"Good." He paused. "Although I do think you need a waffle iron."

She gave him a bigger, more genuine smile and their grip on each other's hands broke. "I will pick one up tomorrow. But you have to make them. And clean the iron."

"No, that's McGee's job."

"Perhaps you will get one for your birthday," she said and then sat back abruptly. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and suddenly pushed her chair back and got to her feet.

Tony watched her with surprise. "What happened?" he asked.

Ziva passed behind him and touched his shoulder briefly as she left the room. "I will be right back."

Tony twisted around to watch her go, and for a few seconds he wondered what the hell was going on in her head. He quickly decided that in this instance he had no hope of working it out, and so turned back to his dinner and worked on trying to eat most of it before she returned and wanted to talk more.

She came back just as he was finishing his last mouthful. She held a business-sized envelope in her hand and there was an almost shy smile on her lips as she sat back down at the table. He arched an eyebrow at her in question, and Ziva pushed her nearly full bowl of pasta away. He idly wondered if that meant it was up for grabs.

"I got you something," she said, successfully wrestling his attention back from the bowl of carbs. "It is actually for your birthday."

A smile jumped to his face. "My birthday? It's not for another week or so."

Ziva nodded. "Yes, I know. But the nature of the gift means that you must get it early." She pushed the envelope over to him, but before he could pick it up she put her hand down on top of it. "I must apologize that it is not wrapped."

Tony had to chuckle. "I don't really care about bows."

She lifted her hand and nodded at him to continue. The envelope wasn't sealed, so he just stuck two fingers in and plucked out the card stock inside. It was two tickets to…something.

"_Fantasia_?" he read out.

"The Capitol Symphony Orchestra is playing the score from _Fantasia_ in the amphitheatre next weekend," she told him. "They will play the movie on the big screen above them. Hopefully the weather will hold. It should be a nice night."

He looked up at her as a smile stretched his face. "This is great, Ziva."

"Do you like it?" she checked.

"Yes," he said enthusiastically. "I had no idea they were doing this. I love it."

She visibly relaxed, and he wondered why she'd doubted herself. "Good."

He held up both tickets. "You're coming with me, right?"

Ziva gave him a smile that warmed his bones and made his spine tingle. "Of course," she said softly. "If you would like."

"Of course," he repeated.

"Happy birthday, Tony."

He held her gaze for a moment as he thought over the date they had ahead of them, if that was really what it was. And he hoped so. Even if they didn't call it one, he honestly hoped that was what it would be. They had been through a rough patch, but he was done with all that. He wanted them to be closer again, and this was a good start.

"Yeah," he said. "I think it will be."

* * *

_Thursday, 17 December 2015_

When Kavita arrived at NCIS, she was a wreck. Her hair was mussed her eyes were red and puffy, and tears ran down her cheeks. A security guard brought her up to the bullpen, and Ziva got up from her desk quickly to greet her. Before she knew it, Kavita had grabbed her in a hug and rested her wet face against her shoulder.

"Oh my God, Ziva!" she sobbed. "I can't believe this is happening."

Ziva let the hug go on for a little bit longer than she should have, or was professional. "I am sorry, Kavita," she said gently, and then disentangled herself.

Kavita allowed her to put space between them, but kept holding on to Ziva's arm. "I just spoke to her yesterday morning," she said. "I don't understand how this happened."

"We will find out," Ziva promised her.

McGee got up from his desk then and approached the two of them. "Kavita, I'm really sorry."

"Tim!" she sobbed, and let go of Ziva to hug McGee. He looked at Ziva over her shoulder, and Ziva gave him a sad smile. Kavita had been a great friend to Bonnie two years ago. Not only a friend, but Bonnie's roommate. Both Ziva and McGee knew how it felt to lose a friend who had been more like family.

Kavita let go of McGee and swiped tears from her cheeks. It made little impact; they were replaced by new tears almost instantly. "I don't know what to do," she told them.

"We need you to help us," Ziva told her, trying to give her something to focus on. "If you and Bonnie were still as close as you used to be, then what you tell us about her life now will help us find out how and why this happened."

Kavita nodded and wiped her cheeks again. "I'll do whatever," she said. "I owe her. And her mom. I just came from spending the night with her. She's…God, you guys. I don't know how she's going to get through this."

McGee put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "We'll do what we can to help her," he assured her. "Ziva's going to take you upstairs so you can talk, okay?"

"Sure," she said, and let Ziva put her hand on her back to turn her around again and point her towards the stairs. "Where's Tony?" she asked.

"He is downstairs," Ziva told her.

Kavita looked up at her with a small, inquisitive frown. "I didn't know you guys all came back here. You don't have your business still?"

"Not anymore," Ziva said. "It was important for us to come back."

Kavita nodded thoughtfully as they started up the stairs. "I'm glad you're all still together."

Ziva smiled but didn't say anything. Not when Kavita was no longer together with her best friend.

They walked the rest of the way to the conference room in silence, and as Kavita got settled Ziva poured her a cup of tea. She put the mug and a box of tissues on the table in front of her, and then took a seat at the head of the table beside her.

"Are you okay?" Kavita suddenly asked her.

"Hmm?" Ziva asked.

Kavita looked suddenly sympathetic towards her, and a little hesitant. "I mean…all that stuff you went through with Eddie."

A stab of panic sliced through Ziva's chest, but it was gone before it could spread any further. Ziva pushed the memory away and gave Kavita a soft, reassuring smile. "Yes, thank you. I am fine."

Kavita reached for a tissue and pressed it to her eyes. "I'm sorry to ask," she said. "I should have gotten in touch with you before now—"

"Kavita," Ziva broke in. "Do not worry yourself about it. I am fine, we know Eddie is still in prison. Let's focus on how Bonnie was doing." She waited until Kavita nodded before commencing her official line of questioning. "You said that the last time you spoke was yesterday morning?"

"I think about 10 o'clock," Kavita said. "It was our daily check in."

"How was her mood?"

"She was happy. Just normal, happy Bonnie."

"Did she mention any plans for the day?" Ziva asked, thinking about Bonnie's stomach contents.

Kavita nodded and sniffed. "Um, yeah. She was meeting this guy for lunch. Tom."

Ziva perked up. "Who is Tom?"

"He was one of the other agents she went through training with," Kavita said. "Did you know she was in training to be an NCIS agent?"

Ziva smiled and nodded, even as she felt herself deflate a little. "Yes. What brought that on?"

Kavita broke into a smile for the first time that day. "You," she said with a small laugh. "After everything you guys did last time, giving Bonnie her life back, putting Eddie away. She decided that she wanted to do the same thing. Help people who needed it. That time with Eddie was horrible for her, but it was a turning point."

Ziva wasn't sure how she felt about that. She was proud, for sure, and if she had found out about Bonnie's plans before she died she would have been entirely encouraging. But Bonnie _had_ died. Despite just completing training to become a federal agent, she hadn't been able to defend herself. Ziva didn't know whether that was because her killer had just overwhelmed her, or because Bonnie had never been equipped to deal with an attack. If it was the latter, then Ziva couldn't help but feel a little bit responsible for playing a part in making her think that she could.

This job was _not_ for everyone.

But Kavita didn't need to know any of that. She was clearly supportive of Bonnie's choice, and since Ziva wanted to be as well, she gave Kavita a compassionate smile.

"Good for her," she said. "A lot of people find it difficult to turn a situation like that to their advantage."

"She's always been pretty resourceful," Kavita said.

Ziva got them back on track. "So, she met another trainee agent named Tom. Do you know his surname?"

Kavita dragged a hand through her hair and then tucked wild strands behind her ear. "I don't know."

Ziva let it go. They would be able to find out. "Had she been seeing anyone recently?"

"No," Kavita said. "She's only had one or two boyfriends since Eddie. Short term. No one for a couple of months. She was pretty focused on her training."

"Can you think of anyone who had given her any trouble lately?"

"No. It sounded like she got along well with the other agents. She really enjoyed her time with them." She gave Ziva a quick smile. "I met them all a few times, and they just all seemed really supportive of each other."

"You two weren't roommates anymore?" Ziva guessed.

"Not for about a year," she replied. "She'd gone down to North Carolina for training. Only got back a couple of weeks ago and she was staying with her mom. She just found out she was being sent to the Norfolk base, so she was going to move there in the new year."

Ziva nodded thoughtfully. There wasn't a whole lot that she'd gotten from the conversation, aside from a lead to follow up with Bonnie's new friend Tom. Still, there was something niggling at the back of Ziva's brain that was making her uneasy, and it wouldn't hurt to bring it up now.

She rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward. "Kavita, we know that Eddie is still in prison. McGee checked. But has he contacted Bonnie since he was put away?"

Kavita shook her head. "No."

"Are you sure?" Ziva asked. "Maybe someone else contacted her, but she had a feeling it was really him?"

"No," Kavita said again. "She would have told me. And she never did." She frowned. "You don't think Eddie somehow did this, do you? That's not possible."

Ziva gave her a reassuring smile. "No, we just have to cover our bases," she told her. But while Kavita seemed to buy it, Ziva wasn't so sure that she believed her own words.

* * *

**A/N:** Like I said in chapter one, I'm not watching this season of the show, so I have no idea whether this version of Delilah is anything like the real version. I'm not trying to make them the same, so yes, I'm writing willfully out of character. Flame me if you must, but I figure that she's hardly a main character so it can't really matter that much. If this enrages you, maybe try to chill out a bit. If you find any of the other characters out of character to who they were at the end of season 10, then that's my bad for being a lazy writer. Or we just have different ideas of who the characters are. If you're left in the minority and like the chapter, thanks very much. You're super, and I _love_ that sweater on you.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Thursday, 17 December 2015_

"We're looking at a little place in Silver Spring. A one-bed above a dry cleaner's. It's kind of gross, but the landlord reckons the heat works so it's already way better than our current place."

Ziva looked up from her computer to throw Quinn a sympathetic look. "Does 'gross' mean beyond repair? Or will it be okay if you spend a weekend cleaning it?"

Quinn frowned at her, not comprehending. "A _whole_ weekend?"

"Ziva used to live in Silver Spring," McGee told Quinn from the other side of the room. Then he looked at Ziva. "Was that the place that blew up?"

Ziva shook her head. "No. I moved from Silver Spring on my own accord."

"Your house blew up?" Quinn asked, stunned. "How'd that happen?"

Ziva hesitated a moment and glanced at McGee. He shot her a fleeting look of apology before getting up and heading to the printer. "Just…faulty gas lines," she said, giving Quinn the vaguest of truths. "No injuries."

Quinn looked at her, askance. "But…your _house_ blew up. Did you lose much?"

Ziva shrugged, as if she wasn't particularly bothered by it. Quinn had been with them for a year and a half and had proven himself to be loyal and trustworthy. Furthermore, Ziva liked him. But she still needed some more time before she gave him her full backstory. "Nothing irreplaceable. Have you looked at the apartment yet?" she asked, moving the conversation back to a more comfortable place.

"We're supposed to go look at it tonight," Quinn said. "If I can get out of here by six. Otherwise Yasmin'll just go by herself."

"You'll get out of here by six if you find me a killer," Gibbs said as he rounded the corner into the bullpen. "Hell, I might be really nice and let you go by five."

Quinn, still learning the intricacies of Gibbs' personality, perked up. "Really?"

"No," Gibbs said, and came to a stop by McGee's desk as his senior field agent returned from the printer. "Talk me through what we've got."

"Bonnie's cell phone activity," McGee said, and pulled it up on the screen. "It's all calls to her mother, Kavita, her sister. A couple more to other agents she was in training with, including one to Tom Chesterfield on the morning she died."

"Could be her lunch date," Ziva threw in. "Kavita said Bonnie had plans to go to lunch with a Tom from her training."

Gibbs nodded and McGee continued.

"Incoming calls are much the same. It's the same numbers over and over. Nothing interesting. But her mom's home phone line is different. Quinn found a call that stood out."

Quinn stood up and approached the plasma, then pointed at the number McGee highlighted. "This one came in at 3.25pm from a payphone in Tacoma Park. Only lasted 15 seconds. I'm trying to track down some video surveillance from around the pay phone to see if we can ID who called her."

"Good," Gibbs said, and looked at Ziva. "You get anything from the friend?"

Ziva shook her head regretfully. "She knew of no threats against Bonnie. No boyfriends, no one bothering her. I will chase down Tom Chesterfield and talk to him. He may have been the last person to see her alive."

Gibbs pointed at her. "Find out where he lives. We'll go now."

Ziva returned to her computer. "On it."

"Wait, Gibbs? Are you leaving?" Abby called as she trotted into the bullpen. She waved about the iPad in her hand. "I have stuff for you. Well actually, I don't have stuff for you. But that, in and of itself, is stuff. Sort of."

"Abs," Gibbs said, his tone just this side of impatient.

Abby got to the point. "Right. So, I went through everything that Ducky pulled off the body and that you guys collected from the scene."

"What did you find?"

Abby's face fell. "Well, like I was saying, nothing. All the hairs on Bonnie's clothes were hers, fibers were consistent with her clothes and the living room carpet. The fingerprints you collected all came back to Bonnie or her mom, except one from the kitchen sink."

Ziva looked up from writing Tom Chesterfield's address on a Post-it note. "Who did it belong to?"

"I don't know yet," Abby said.

Ziva's eyes flicked between Gibbs and McGee. They were both wearing the same expression of interest as her.

"That's not nothing, Abby," Gibbs pointed out.

"But I don't know whose it is yet!" Abby repeated. "It's useless until I find a hit."

"It's something," McGee said.

"Not yet," Abby argued. "I've got it running through every database and I haven't got any hits yet. But I'll keep working on it."

"I know you will," Gibbs told her, then cocked his finger at Ziva. "Come on."

Ziva got up and grabbed her coat, but Abby stopped them again. "Wait! One more thing."

Gibbs and Ziva turned and looked at her expectantly.

Abby looked sheepish. "I don't suppose you've found the knife yet? Or the cable ties Ducky said she was probably bound with?"

Ziva felt a flare of professional anger and signed heavily. "No," she said, aiming her anger at herself. "We looked all over the place but we did not locate them. It seems the killer policed the scene."

Abby shrank back a little. "Okay. I just wanted to check."

"We're on it," Gibbs told her, and then looked between McGee and Quinn. "Chase down that surveillance tape," he told them. "I want something in our pockets before we go home tonight."

…

Tom Chesterfield lived in an apartment complex just a few blocks down from where Bonnie Stewart used to. His complex looked much the same as the one to the left and the one to the right—red brick, three-storey and in need of a blast from a high pressure hose to clean off all the dirt that had accumulated over the last couple of decades. According to the information Gibbs and Ziva had, Tom lived by himself on the second floor in a one-bedroom apartment furthest from the elevator. Ziva shot a cursory glance up at what she suspected was his bedroom window as she and Gibbs walked up the sidewalk to the complex entrance, but there didn't appear to be any movement behind the curtains. She waited by Gibbs' side as he pressed the buzzer for apartment 208. A few seconds passed without a response, so Gibbs pressed it again. He waited longer before he pressed it a third time, but it, too, went without acknowledgement.

Gibbs looked at Ziva. "Did he start work yet?"

Ziva shook her head. "No. Like Bonnie, he was not scheduled to begin until the new year."

Gibbs pursed his lips and surveyed the door buzzers for the other apartments. None of them had names next to them, so they couldn't choose who had a friendly-sounding name and might be sympathetic to their plight.

"Landlord," Ziva said, but before Gibbs made a move a man in his 20s carrying a rucksack over his shoulder came up beside them. He gave Gibbs and Ziva a polite nod before he unlocked the door to the complex and stepped inside.

"Hey," Ziva called to him as she recognized him from a photo she'd looked at just before coming over. "Are you Tom Chesterfield?"

The red-haired man twisted and planted his hand back against the front door to catch it before he closed. He pushed it open again and stuck his head out to talk to them. "Pardon me?"

Ziva took a step towards him. "I asked if you are Tom Chesterfield."

He looked between them curiously. "Who are you?" he asked instead of answering.

Ziva shot a look at Gibbs—damn probationary agents were always so uptight—and they both pulled their badges out for him.

"Special Agent Gibbs," Gibbs introduced. "And Special Agent David. From NCIS."

Tom's curiosity deepened. "Yes, I'm Tom Chesterfield. But you already knew that. What can I help you with, agents?"

"Can we come inside?" Gibbs asked. "We'd like to talk to you about a case."

Tom looked confused. "A case? But I haven't been assigned to a team yet. I was told I wouldn't be starting at the agency until January."

"Perhaps if you let us in, we could explain," Ziva said.

"Yeah, sure," Tom said, and pushed the door open wider for them. "Come on up."

Tom's apartment was dark and cold when they went inside. All the curtains were closed and the lights were off, but the first thing Tom did after dumping his rucksack on the floor beside the door was to go to the thermostat and turn it up.

"I just need to get the heat pumping," he told them, and then crossed to the living room window and opened the curtains.

"How long have you been away?" Ziva asked, putting all the pieces together.

"Oh, only since yesterday morning," he said. "Went to visit my dad." He turned to face them again. "Do either of you want a drink?" he offered.

"No, we're not staying," Gibbs told him. "Where does your dad live?"

"Virginia Beach," Tom replied cautiously. "Why? What's going on?"

Gibbs started wandering around the room, so Ziva took over the questioning. "Do you know Bonnie Stewart?"

"Sure," he replied. "She was in the same class as me at FLETC."

"And when was the last time you saw her?"

"We had lunch yesterday, before I left," he replied. "What happened to her?"

"You think something happened to her?" Gibbs asked from behind him.

Tom didn't flinch. "Well, two NCIS agents are asking me about her," he reasoned. "Either something happened to her or this is a surprise part of agent training."

Ziva met Gibbs' eyes over Tom's shoulder, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Ziva proceeded to tell Tom what happened. "I am sorry to tell you this, but Bonnie was found murdered last night."

Tom studied her for a full five seconds before he moved or even made a sound. "Are you kidding me?" he asked with disbelief.

"No," Ziva said gently.

"I _just_ saw her yesterday," Tom said firmly. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"We're sure," Gibbs told him, continuing his walk around the room.

Tom turned to look at Gibbs. "How?"

"How am I sure?"

"How did she _die_," Tom elaborated, his tone hardening as Gibbs played games with him. Ziva knew Gibbs was only trying to get an instinct for whether Tom had anything to do with it, but she couldn't help but flinch with empathy for him. The deaths of people close to you were always difficult, and sometimes more so if you had to remain professional about it.

"She was strangled," Ziva told him. "In her mother's house."

Tom swung back around to look at her. Tears gathered in his eyes as it all sank in, but then he pulled himself together in front of the two senior agents. "I had no idea," he told them. "I guess you want me to give you a timeline of our time together yesterday?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

Tom nodded and took a seat on the couch. Ziva sat in an armchair across from him and took out her notepad while Gibbs continued to pace slowly around the room.

"We made plans the day before to catch up for lunch," he began as he ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up at all angles. "She called me yesterday morning at about half past ten to double-check I was still coming. I'd mentioned to her the day before that if my dad needed me to come to his place earlier, then I wouldn't be able to make it. But I hadn't heard from Dad, so we met as planned."

"Where was that?" Ziva asked.

"It's this place down from Dupont called Palermo," Tom replied. "We met at about 12.30, hung around for an hour or so. Maybe a bit more. I was in my car and on the road by two."

"Did Bonnie mention anything to you that seemed out of the ordinary?" Ziva asked.

"Like if someone had threatened to kill her?" Tom asked. "No." He paused then, and cocked his head to the side. "You know, I think there was a guy that she had trouble with once. She never really went into detail about it, but her friend Kavita would know. They're really close."

Ziva had a feeling she already knew all about the guy Bonnie had trouble with. But on the off chance that there was another man they needed to look at, Ziva questioned him further about it. "Can you remember what she told you about him?"

Tom dropped his head and rubbed his face with his hands. "Uh…not much. We were sitting around one night at Glynco with another trainee and talking about why we'd decided to train to be a federal agent. She said that she'd met this woman a few years back who used to work for NCIS. She helped her deal with this guy who was stalking her when the cops couldn't. The guy…I think he was an ex-boyfriend."

Ziva kept her composure but felt Gibbs' eyes on her. She ignored him. "Did she ever mention anyone else who gave her trouble?" she asked. "Or anything strange that had happened to her in the last few weeks."

Tom shook his head sadly. "No. She was her normal self. Happy. Frank as ever. She was talking about going Christmas shopping today and what she was going to get everyone." He paused and shook his head. "I can't believe it."

Ziva watched him closely. He seemed completely sincere, and behaved the way that friends of a deceased person often behaved. She didn't get the feeling that there was anything else going on, but there was one fairly routine question she had to ask.

"Tom, what was your relationship with Bonnie?"

He shook his head. "What do you mean?"

"Was it purely platonic?"

His face opened up as he realized what she was getting at. "Oh! Yes, completely. There was no romantic interest there on either side. Bonnie was really focused on her career and she just wasn't my type."

Ziva had an inkling that there was more to that, but nothing nefarious that would have an impact on their case. She let it go. She looked up at Gibbs to see if he had anything else he wanted to check. Gibbs shook his head, so Ziva reached into her pocket for one of her cards.

"You have been very helpful," Ziva told Tom. "I am sorry to have brought you bad news."

Tom nodded numbly. "Yeah. Me too."

She stood up as Gibbs headed to the door and put her card down on the coffee table. "If you think of anything else, please give me a call."

"Sure."

She joined Gibbs at the door and they were just about to walk out when Tom called out.

"Wait, Ziva?"

Ziva turned and looked at him in question, expecting that there was something important he had just remembered. Tom was holding her card and looking at her with growing comprehension.

"Were you were the agent?" he said. "Who helped Bonnie that time with her stalker, I mean. I knew it was something with a _Z_. Your name sounds familiar."

Ziva swallowed hard, uncomfortable with being found out. But she nodded. "Yes. I was."

Tom nodded. "She spoke highly of you."

Ziva didn't know what to say. She, Tony and McGee had helped Bonnie the first time around, but now they were struggling to do it again. And she didn't know whether she was responsible or not for giving Bonnie false bravado, or making her think that she could do what she couldn't. She pressed her lips together in a thin line, and then nodded her thanks before brushing past Gibbs into the hallway. A moment later, he followed her.

They made the trip down to the ground floor and out to the car in silence. But as soon as Gibbs had started the engine and pulled into traffic, he turned a knowing look on her.

"You're uncomfortable knowing she thought highly of you?"

Ziva turned her head to look out the passenger window, purposefully hiding her eyes from him. "We do not do this job so that others will think highly of us," she replied.

"Sometimes they do anyway."

Ziva absently picked at a loose thread on her coat. "I do not know why she fixated on me."

"Because you helped her."

"So did Tony and McGee."

"Tony and McGee aren't women."

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Gender should not mean anything."

"But it does anyway," Gibbs said bluntly. "If she already wanted to be a cop and then you set an example—"

"She did not want to be a cop," Ziva said, swinging around to face him. "She was working in a bistro and studying to be in public relations or…something like that. I do not know what a public relations person does, exactly, but it has nothing to do with law enforcement. And there was nothing about her that made me think she would be good at it. McGee thinks there was. Tony thinks there was. But I never saw it. So why on earth would she switch careers?"

"Ziva, sometimes you don't know what you want until you see it."

She held his gaze until he looked back at the road, and then turned her face back to the passenger window. "What if I am responsible?" she asked quietly.

Gibbs sounded annoyed. "You making a confession, David?"

"No," she said, ignoring his challenge. "But what if she was never cut out for this, but she went after it anyway because of something I did or said?"

"You got some ego there," he commented.

She sighed heavily. "That is not what I meant."

"Do you know how many rounds of testing she had to go through to get as far as she did?" Gibbs asked.

Ziva threw him a self-aware look. "No. I did not go through FLETC. I just…skipped all that."

Gibbs looked fleetingly amused. "Lots of rounds," he told her. "If she didn't have what it takes to be an agent, she wouldn't have passed FLETC."

"If she had what it takes to be an agent, why did she not fight off her attacker?" Ziva countered.

"You're not blaming the victim, Ziva," Gibbs said with something approaching disappointment.

"No," she insisted. "I just want to know what happened and why she did not fight back. She did not have defensive wounds."

Gibbs sighed. "Well, gee, someone should investigate that."

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Thank you for pointing that out, _DiNozzo_," she mumbled.

Gibbs lifted a shoulder. "I know you miss him."

Her eyes slid over to him. "So do you," she pointed out.

Gibbs held his poker face and didn't say anything. She didn't see the point in pushing him. They both knew it was true. So she turned her attention back to the case.

"Gibbs, I know that Eddie Hertzog is still in prison. But he is involved. I can feel it."

There was a long pause before Gibbs changed his tone to the one he used as a father, not a boss. "Because of the way she died?"

Ziva kept staring out the window. She didn't want to go into details, but if she was going to convince him, she would have to. "I think—"

"Eddie strangled you," Gibbs said. And although she doubted he meant to spin her off her axis, the fact that he said it so plainly took her breath away. "He strangled you, the same way someone strangled Bonnie."

Ziva swallowed and forced herself to turn her head to look at him. She didn't have to guess who he heard that information from. "I do not like it when you and Tony use your little coffee dates to talk about me behind my back."

Gibbs glanced at her. "He's worried about you."

"You should both understand that he has no reason to be."

"You think Hertzog paid someone off?"

"Perhaps," Ziva said. "A friend from the outside. He had many who were willing to give him false alibis before."

They drove a few blocks in silence as Gibbs thought it over. When they stopped at a set of lights he looked over at her with an expression she knew would be useless to argue with. "We need evidence first," he told her. "If we don't get anywhere by tomorrow, you can look into it."

…

When Ziva and Gibbs walked back into the bullpen they found all the desks full. McGee and Quinn were still at their desks, but Abby was swivelling back and forth in Gibbs' chair, and Tony was reclined in Ziva's with his feet up on the desk and his hands behind his head. With Gibbs away, they'd been taking the opportunity to talk real estate.

"No, no. Not Silver Spring," Tony was saying. "Ziva used to live there when she first moved here and didn't know any better. It was a pain in the ass. Especially over that first summer when I had to keep driving out there."

"Why were you driving out there to see her?" McGee asked, mostly teasing. "I thought you two said you held out much longer than her first summer here."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Shut up, McGossipGirl."

"Okay, so not Silver Spring?" Quinn asked, getting them back on track.

"I think you should stay in Maryland," Abby said.

"No, I think you'd like Laurel," McGee told him.

Quinn shook his head slowly. "I don't know where that is."

"Not far."

"Or you could just make it easy and move someplace close like Alexandria or Georgetown or—"

"Tony," Abby cut in. "No."

"Georgetown is a very nice area," he argued, and then noticed Ziva and Gibbs come in. "Oh. Hey, honey." He waited a beat and added, "Hey, Ziva."

"Pumpkin," Gibbs returned. "What are you doing here?"

"My team is looking through the contents of a dumpster, so I'm taking the opportunity to talk your baby probie out of a bad real estate decision."

"Doesn't sound like work," Gibbs said.

"It shouldn't be," Tony said, sitting forward in Ziva's chair. "But it is."

Ziva came around her desk and nudged Tony's shoulder. "Get out of my chair."

He met her eyes to share a smile before getting up and resettling on the bookshelf behind her desk. Ziva sat down.

"I thought Georgetown was kind of expensive," Quinn said.

"It is," Abby and McGee said in unison.

"Oh, yeah," Tony said, as if just remembering it. He clicked his fingers and pointed at Quinn. "What you have to do is get yourself a partner who will buy a house there for you." He looked down at Ziva and gave her a wink. "Thanks, sweetcheeks."

Ziva gave him an impassive look in return. He figured that meant she was annoyed with him about something.

"You're all wasting so much time with this, so I guess this means you have a killer for me to arrest," Gibbs cut in.

"Not quite," McGee said. "But we're closer." He nodded at Abby, who jumped up and aimed the clicker at the plasma. A mug shot of a heavyset man with a dark beard and ponytail came up.

"I fingered the fingerprint owner," she said. "Meet Ricky D'Augustino, age 34. I found him when I extended my search to Pennsylvania."

"He did time," Gibbs guessed.

"Back in 2007 for sexual battery of his girlfriend," McGee said. "Did a few years but was let out early in 2011 for good behavior. No record of any arrest since."

"Four years for sexual battery," Ziva stated with disgust.

"Uh, it was more like three in the end," Quinn said with a wince.

Ziva rolled her eyes and blew out a frustrated sigh. "Of course it was," she muttered.

"Where is he now?" Gibbs asked, trying to steer the conversation back to the case.

"Haven't gotten that far yet," McGee said, and then held up his hands to stall the protest that he knew was about to come from Gibbs. "Abby just brought that to us five minutes ago. Me and Quinn have been working on tracking down surveillance footage from the payphone used to call Bonnie's mom's house the day she died."

Quinn stood up and walked over to Abby to give her a charming smile. "May I?" he asked, holding out his hand.

Abby returned the smile and handed over the clicker. "You may."

Tony looked down at Ziva and rolled his eyes at her at the display. He hated it when Quinn tried to be all charming. That was _his_ job. Ziva gave him a quick frown and shook her head at him, warning him to keep it to himself.

"This is the payphone outside a drugstore in Tacoma Park," Quinn said, showing them surveillance footage of a busy shopping strip. "It's a pretty affluent area, so the phone isn't used much. But fast-forward to 3.25pm, the time that Bonnie Stewart received a call, and there's this guy."

They watched a big man in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt approach the payphone about a minute before the call was placed to Bonnie. He took a card out of his pocket, read it, gestured a little bit as if he was coaching himself, and then picked up the receiver. He cradled the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he held the card up in one hand and punched in the number with his other. Then he checked over his shoulder before standing still for the next 19 seconds, and then hanging up and walking away.

"Surveillance timestamp puts the call at the same time as the one Bonnie received," Quinn told them. "And it lasts for approximately the same length of time."

"That's our caller," Gibbs said.

"It is not Ricky D'Augustino," Ziva said. "Not unless he turned 80 pounds of fat into muscle."

"Maybe he has in four years," Quinn said.

"Maybe?" Gibbs questioned.

Quinn stared at him for a moment before he caught on. "We'll find out," he assured Gibbs.

Gibbs turned to Abby. "Can you work on cleaning that up so we can make an ID?"

Abby saluted. "Can do!"

"McGee, help her out. I want to know who he is, if not Ricky D'Augustino," Gibbs said. "Tony, Ziva, find out everything you can about this guy and how he would've come to be in Bonnie Stewart's house."

"Oh, I'm flattered, boss," Tony said. "But I have my own case."

Gibbs stopped short and stared at him before realizing his mistake. "Quinn!" he barked. "Help Ziva."

"No problem," Quinn said.

Gibbs walked over to Ziva's desk and glared without much weight at Tony. "What are you doing here, DiNozzo?" he asked.

"I just need Ziva for two minutes," he said as he stood up and tugged on Ziva's sleeve. "Or perhaps one, if all goes well."

Gibbs rolled his eyes, turned and walked away, and Tony took that as his blessing. He cocked his head at Ziva as he came out from behind her desk.

"I need you," he said.

Ziva gestured at the team, making it clear that now wasn't a great time. "Can it wait?"

"No."

She pushed back her chair and stood, and then followed him past his old desk. "I will only be a minute," she told Quinn as she passed.

She followed Tony all the way back behind the staircase, where Tony crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

"What?" she asked.

"Hello, honeybear," he said with a grin.

Ziva made a face like he knew she would. "Tony," she sighed.

He cut to the chase. "Are you okay?"

Ziva misunderstood. "Yes, I am fine! I just need to find this guy. What is it?"

Tony took half a step towards her and lowered his voice. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," he said. "About how you are."

She stared at him for a moment and then caught on. "I am fine," she repeated, but without the impatience from before. "Really."

"Really?" he asked, and narrowed his eyes at her. "Because you've got that look on your face, Ziva. The one that says you want everyone, including yourself, to think you're fine when you're _really_ not fine."

She hesitated, and Tony knew she was deciding whether or not to tell him to drop it, or to be honest with him. He tried not to take it to heart. He liked to think that if they were having this conversation at home then she wouldn't have resisted discussing it. She was definitely better at that these days.

When she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall too, he knew she was going to talk. "Three years for sexual battery," she said, looking up at him with sadness and frustration in her eyes.

He dipped his head as a slice of pain went through his chest. This case was getting more personal. "I know," he said softly. "It's not enough."

She turned her back against the wall and closed her eyes. "I am tired of this, Tony. I am tired of predators being sent away from sentencing with a slap on the wrist."

"Would you rather they walk away without any punishment?"

"Of course not. But the woman he raped is going to live with it for the rest of her life." She paused, and Tony could see her pulse jumping in her neck. He wanted to wrap his arms around her now and try to give her some kind of reassurance. But he couldn't do that here, and Ziva would not want him to. He'd have to wait until they were home.

"Three years is not adequate," she said with a shake of her head.

"No. It's not."

She rolled her head to the side to look up at him again. "Gibbs and I just met with one of the agents who had been training at FLETC with Bonnie. He said that she spoke highly of me."

The words seemed to catch in her throat, but Tony wasn't sure why. "I'm not surprised."

Her face fell a little. "What if we didn't do enough for her?"

"Ziva, we did a lot for her," he told her. "We put the guy behind bars."

"I am sure he is involved in this," she said. "I know it."

"Don't put blinders on," he warned.

"That is not what I am doing." She sighed and looked at her feet. "I just want to find out who is responsible. I am sick of these men coming in and making people they are supposed to love and care for suffer."

Tony glanced over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear before he reached down and discreetly held her hand. "You'll find him, Ziva. He's not going to get away. And he will go to jail for more than three years."

She squeezed his hand and gave him a faint smile. "We can hope."

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Yes," she said, and pushed herself off the wall. "So you can tell Gibbs that when you have your next little coffee date."

Suddenly her vague irritation with him in the bullpen made sense. "Oh. You heard about that, huh?"

"Tony, you told him everything," she said, but the irritation was now gone from her eyes.

"He needed to know," Tony countered. "He's your boss. And he's Gibbs. He's not going to breathe a word of it to anyone."

"I just wish you would have asked me."

Tony nodded, accepting that. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm cooking you dinner tonight."

"Because you told Gibbs what happened?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

He shook his head and leaned in to give her cheek a quick kiss. "Nope. Because I love you." He gave her a grin and then gently smacked her arm. "Get back to work." He turned and started off in the direction of his team when Ziva called out after him.

"You are a good man, Tony."

He turned to look back at her smiling at him with open affection, and his stomach did the little flip it did—_still_ did—when she looked at him like that.

"Only to you," he called back with a wink, and then went back to work.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks to all of you still following along, and to those of you sending me nice notes. I know you love the Tiva parts, but I hope this case-centric chapter caught your interest too.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Friday, 18 December 2015_

Early in the morning, before the sun had properly risen, Ziva quietly entered Bonnie Stewart's mother's house. The residence had been sealed since Bonnie's body had been taken away and NCIS had wrapped up their preliminary investigation of the crime scene, and although the central heating had stayed on, Ziva shivered as she closed the front door. It felt empty in there. The kind of emptiness that followed a death and clung around long past the time it was welcome. She jammed her hands deep into her coat pockets and turned to the living room, stepping softly so as not to disturb the grieving silence. She flipped on the light switch, feeling a streak of fingerprint powder transfer to her fingertips, and then blinked in the new light and looked around. The Christmas tree was still standing tall above a mess of dried blood on the carpet. The couches hadn't been straightened after they'd had to move them to get Ducky's stretcher in. The curtains were still drawn, keeping the outside world from looking in at the aftermath of tragedy. But Ziva was more interested in what was left behind upstairs.

She turned around again and headed for the staircase, and as she climbed the stairs she tried to justify to herself her reason for coming. They hadn't found too much when they'd looked into Ricky D'Augustino, aside from a potential reason for him being in the Stewarts' home. He was a plumber working out of Arlington, and a quick call to Bonnie's mother had provided confirmation that he'd been called in the day before Bonnie's death to look at a blockage in the kitchen drain. That didn't mean he hadn't killed her. It was completely possible that Ricky had seen Bonnie when he'd come to the house and, for twisted reasons they couldn't guess at yet, came back the next day and killed her. Ziva would track him down and interview him later today, but right now she had something else to check. Because she still couldn't shake the feeling that Eddie Hertzog was somehow involved.

* * *

_Monday, 1 July 2013_

Ziva had almost completely zoned out when the doorbell brought her back to earth. She had been sitting at her kitchen island and staring at cabinets she hated more and more every day when she'd started thinking about how to fix them. A coat of paint wouldn't do. She didn't like the country-style carvings in them. But she didn't want them to be plain either. Her brain had been in a cabinetry daydream for too long without an acceptable payoff, so she was happy to slide off her stool and rejoin the real world.

Never in her life would she have thought she'd have time to waste on thinking about kitchen cabinet doors.

The doorbell rang again when she was about halfway down the hallway, and Ziva jogged the rest of the way. Bonnie was standing on the doorstep, looking distressed and clutching her handbag tightly.

"Hi, Ziva."

Ziva gave her a friendly smile and opened the door wider for her. "Hello. Come in."

"Are you busy?" Bonnie asked as she brushed by her into the foyer.

"No, not at all," Ziva replied a little too quickly. "I was just thinking about lunch. Have you eaten?"

Bonnie held her hand up at the implied offer. "No, I'm not hungry."

Ziva nodded and gestured up the hallway. "Well, come in and we can talk." She led Bonnie to the dining room that had become the team's makeshift workspace over the last week. Although they had an office in the basement, it didn't feel comfortable to work in. Ziva would have to do something about that. After she worked out what to do with the kitchen.

"Would you like a drink?" she offered as they walked into the dining room.

Bonnie shook her head, and took a seat. "No. Thanks. I just wanted to show you something I got this morning."

Ziva took the seat adjacent to her and nodded. "Of course."

Bonnie reached into her handbag and brought out a letter-sized envelope. As she turned it over in her hands, Ziva noticed that it had a handwritten address on the front, but no stamp. Her gut made a noise before Bonnie reached into the envelope and pulled out a few photographs. She handed the small stack to Ziva, and then crossed her arms angrily.

"Those were under my door this morning," she said, her voice hard.

Ziva sighed to herself as she turned the photos right way up. Eddie had already sent Bonnie photos of her out and about. It was an effective way of giving someone the creeps. But while the other photos he had sent had all been from a distance, these ones were very close up. The top photo was on Bonnie on the phone in her kitchen inside apartment, and also _taken_ from inside her apartment. The next was taken from within Bonnie's bedroom as she sat on the corner of her bed. The final was an extreme close up of the side of Bonnie's face and the top of her hair. It was difficult to determine where that one had been taken, but the image had the same slightly fish-eyed exposure to it that the others did.

Eddie Hertzog had been inside Bonnie's apartment.

Ziva looked up at Bonnie to find her staring at the photos with wide eyes and a tight jaw. Her protective streak fired at the intrusion of Bonnie's safe place, and she found herself reaching over to touch Bonnie's hand.

"Are you all right?" she checked.

Bonnie nodded tightly. "Mhmm. Just furious."

"They arrived today?"

"Yeah. Sometime after Kavita left for work. I called her as soon as I found them and she said they weren't there when she left."

"Was there a note?" Ziva asked, reaching for the envelope. She peered inside as Bonnie shook her head.

"No. Nothing."

"Do you recognize the handwriting?"

She nodded. "I'm pretty sure it's Eddie's."

"And you are positive that no one else has a key to your apartment?"

"Yes, one hundred percent. I don't know how he took these photos but it was never through any implied permission for him to be there." She paused and scowled as she added, "That ass."

Ziva looked at the photo of Bonnie on her bed. She felt sick to her stomach. Taking photos of a woman without her knowledge or consent on the street was bad enough. Taking photos of her without her knowledge or consent while she was literally sitting in her most personal place was an utter violation.

"Ziva?" Bonnie said. "What if he breaks in again? When I'm there, and Kavita's not. What if he…" Her fear kept her from finishing the sentence, but Ziva didn't need her to. She reached over to squeeze her hand, and looked her directly in the eye when she answered.

"Bonnie, I don't think he will. Right now he is getting his kicks from scaring you. From bullying you from afar. Right now, he is too much of a coward to face you."

Bonnie swallowed and absorbed that. She seemed to relax a little, but not all the way. "But what happens when doing it from afar isn't enough for him? That's how these guys work, right? They escalate or something."

"Sometimes," Ziva replied, seeing no point in lying to her. "But me and Tony and McGee are here to stop that happening."

She attempted a smile. "Okay."

"Do you mind if Tony and I check your apartment this afternoon? I want to work out how he got these photos."

Bonnie nodded. "Yeah. Me too."

…

"Left a bit."

Tony took half a step to his left, following Ziva's instruction. Across the room his partner held up one of the photos Bonnie had given her, and looked between it and Tony's position in Bonnie's kitchen.

"That's it," Ziva said. She turned and looked behind her at where the camera that took the photo should have been positioned. But there was no obvious camera there. "Hmm."

Tony left the galley kitchen and walked across the living room to Ziva. Together they stared at the wall of shelves and all the places that a camera could have been hidden. There were books on the shelves, some little decorative boxes, jars, candlesticks and framed photos. Beside the shelf a large, framed abstract print hung on the wall. There were no electronics to be seen.

"Okay," Tony said to himself. "I think it's probably going to be at my head height." He reached up to pull out a stack of books, and Ziva got up on her tiptoes to pull down a framed photo of Bonnie and Kavita. He thumbed through each book and gave each one a shake, but came up empty. He put them back on the shelf and started on the next one down.

Together they took five minutes to go through three shelves carefully. Every book was inspected, box was opened and knick-knack checked. But they didn't find anything.

"Maybe he removed the camera already," Ziva suggested.

"Maybe," Tony replied, but he wasn't convinced. He looked at the framed print beside the shelves. "Or maybe he's a bit better at this than we give him credit for." He stepped closer to the print and started feeling around the frame, and looked over his shoulder at Ziva. "Remember how tiny some of those cameras Abby's planted on us in the past have been?"

Ziva nodded. "Yes. But are those kinds of cameras easy for a civilian to get? I always thought they were just an Abby thing."

Tony chuckled and lifted a shoulder. "Yeah. Maybe." He used a fingertip to pull the frame away from the wall.

"Wait, stop," Ziva said, and put a hand on his arm. "I saw something then when you moved it."

"Where?"

"Top left corner. There is a small hole in the print."

Tony pulled the frame away from the wall again and looked up behind the print. There, he saw a small black disc a little larger than a quarter, with a little black wire coming out of the side of it. Adrenaline fired through him as he pulled the print completely off the wall and turned it around to show Ziva.

"That's got to be it."

Ziva leaned forward to inspect the device. "Is that a transmitter coming off it?"

"Could be. I don't think that thing is big enough to have a hard drive. But on the other hand, what the hell do I know?"

Ziva scratched her head. "Okay. So we have evidence. But we cannot prove who the evidence belongs to."

"Can't lift fingerprints."

Ziva looked up at him with a hopeless smile. "Could we bribe Abby?"

For a moment, Tony did consider it. But ultimately he shook his head. "We can't risk getting her in trouble. And if you, me and Timmy McGee are going to keep doing stuff like this, we need to change the way we investigate. No forensics."

"So we have to use our brains?"

Tony grinned at her, and she gave him a knowing smile back. "Uh-oh."

"Mmm."

He blew out a breath. "Okay. Let's take some photos of it but leave it where it is. It's evidence we can use to build a case against Eddie."

Ziva pulled out her cell phone and took a few photos of the device and its position behind the frame. Then Tony put the print back on the wall.

"Bedroom," he said.

They found Bonnie's bedroom and went through the same process. After fifteen minutes of searching, they found an identical device behind another framed print, and took some more photos. Then they stood in the middle of Bonnie's bedroom and looked at the final photo.

"I have no idea where this was taken," Ziva said.

Tony squinted at the picture, trying to make out any background that could help them pin it down. But all he could see through Bonnie's hair was a white wall. There were white walls all through the apartment.

"I guess it'd have to be someplace where you have to walk close to a wall," he said. "You know, to get a shot that tight."

"Hallways and near doorframes," Ziva said. "You take the front of the apartment, I will take the back."

Tony nodded and headed back towards the kitchen. For a moment he just stood there and looked around, hoping that the camera's hiding place would just jump out at him. But hiding places were exactly that _because_ they didn't jump out at you. He heaved a sigh and started at the front door, then worked his way back inside.

As he searched, he thought about what he and Ziva had talked about. They couldn't do any forensic analysis here. They couldn't pull a fingerprint, put it into AFIS and get a quick match. They couldn't analyze stray hairs they found, or the composition of dirt in a boot print that would tell them where their suspect had been recently. They couldn't use any physical evidence to nail someone for their crime. And even if they could, they weren't authorized to arrest anyone. The most they could do was take their evidence to the police and hope that they did something about it.

For a career cop like Tony, it was hard to accept. But he couldn't let it derail him. Okay, so he couldn't arrest anyone. But he could still use all his skill and his experience to help people like Bonnie. He could talk to people until they talked back. He could follow people from a distance so long as they didn't feel threatened. He could go through their garbage. He could get McGee to track down their online lives. He could build a profile of the bad guy. And he could spend an afternoon turning a client's house upside down searching for hidden recording devices.

His stomach turned as he thought about that. He'd come across so many pieces of scum in his career who would be capable of this kind of thing. And worse. Those guys didn't deserve to be walking around free on the streets. They deserved to be in small, dark rooms, shackled and caged. So even if Tony wasn't a cop anymore, he'd keep doing his part to make sure people like Bonnie didn't have to live in fear. Or people like Abby. Or people like Ziva.

He moved through the kitchen as his thoughts fixed on his partner. Technically she wasn't his partner anymore. But technically she would be anyway until the day he died. And technically, Ziva wasn't the kind of woman who lived in fear and needed his protection. But his desire to watch her back was sometimes so strong that it felt like a tangible thing he could reach out and touch, and hold like a shield in front of her. He couldn't, of course. He could think of too many injuries—physical and psychological—that had slipped past his defensive line and landed squarely on her. Rationally, he knew he couldn't stop bad things from happening to her. Nor could he go back in time and stop men like Michael Rivkin, Ilan Bodner and Saleem from getting their hands on her body and their abuse in her head. But he could continue being her partner, no matter what the circumstances, and do everything he could to keep the next bad guy from getting too close to her.

"Tony?"

At her call, he gave up his search of the living room and went in search of Ziva. He checked Bonnie's bedroom, but when he didn't see Ziva in there he continued to the bathroom. There, he found Ziva standing inside the shower stall. He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms.

"Whatcha doing?" he asked.

Ziva clenched her jaw and nodded at the framed print on the wall across from bathroom mirror. "It is behind that."

Tony pushed himself off the doorframe and checked for himself. Sure enough, there was a third camera there, just like the other two. He looked around, trying to work out why Bonnie would stand so close to the wall. Then he realized that the towel rack was right beneath the print. It was very likely that Bonnie walked right up to the camera every day. He took a few shots of the device and sighed.

"Well, he's thorough."

"He is sick," Ziva spat.

Tony didn't disagree with her, but her tone drew his eyes to her. She was still standing within the glass shower stall, and now her fist was as tight as her jaw.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She looked at him with a frown that seemed to suggest she was disappointed in him for not understanding. "He is filming her bathroom, Tony."

"It's sick," he agreed.

"He is watching her shower," she said, her voice rising as she got more worked up. "He is watching her get ready for her day. He is spying on her here and in her bedroom, where she is at her most vulnerable. And he is rubbing it in her face."

Tony held his hand out to her and beckoned her out of the shower. "I know," he said calmly. "Come here."

Ziva stepped out of the shower and stood facing him. "She doesn't deserve this," she said angrily.

"No."

"We need to get this man, Tony."

He put his hands on her shoulders. "We will," he told her. "We'll get him. But don't let it get under your skin."

She held his gaze as the anger ebbed from her eyes to be replaced with a sadness that made his soul hurt. And he knew where her head was. The same place his had been just minutes ago.

"It is just…" she started thickly, and then looked away when she couldn't finish.

"I know," he assured her. "Ziva, I know." He ran his hands down her arms to her wrists, and Ziva bent her hands to reach for him. They gripped fingers for a few seconds, and then she nodded and lifted her chin again. The sadness had left her eyes and she was Ziva again. Back in control.

"Okay," she said. "We will get him."

They left the bathroom to regroup in the living room.

"Did you find anything else?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. You?"

"No. How are we going to prove these cameras are Eddie's?"

Ziva bit her lip. "Perhaps if we got McGee here he could trace the signal with one of his," she made a waving motion, "computer program things he uses."

Tony clicked his fingers. "Yes! He could do that." He paused and rethought it. "Could he do that?" he asked, now not so sure. "Without our usual resources?"

"I have no idea," she said on a sigh. "Call him."

He pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed McGee.

"McGee."

"Hey. Me and Ziva are at Bonnie's house, and we've found a couple of those pinhole camera thingies installed around the place."

There was a pause. "Ew!" McGee finally said.

"Yeah. Bonnie came to see Ziva this morning with a couple of photos of her taken from inside her apartment," Tony told her. "It's creepy. Listen, these things have these little transmitters on them. If you came over, would you be able to track the signal?"

McGee blew out a breath. "Uh…in theory. I could get my hands on a program that could help with that."

Tony gave Ziva a thumbs up sign. "Well, great! Get over here."

"It'll take me a while," McGee said. "I'll have to talk to some people."

Tony felt less confident. "Okay," he said at length. "What people? Regular people or shady people?"

There was another pause. "Not sure yet."

Tony winced at Ziva. She made a face back that told him she got the message.

"When you say the transmitters are little, do you really mean little? Or are they actually a decent size?" McGee asked.

Tony frowned at being questioned about it. "I mean little."

"But sometimes if you haven't seen a big one, you might think it's little."

Tony scoffed. "I _know_ what a big one looks like, McGee."

"What on earth are you two talking about?" Ziva asked.

"McGee thinks that the little transmitter might actually be a big one, simply because I don't know what I'm talking about," he said.

Ziva rolled her eyes. "It is a little one, McGee," she said loudly.

"Get that?" Tony asked him.

"Okay, fine!" McGee said. "Well in that case, if it _is_ a little one, the receiver would probably have to be somewhere nearby. That's all."

Tony let that sink in for a moment. "Ohhh," he said. "Okay, then we'll look. Where are you?"

"Outside Eddie's workplace," McGee said. "Been here for five hours. Having a great day."

"That's great," Tony said, and then quickly hung up on him. He pocketed his phone. "McGee says the receiver would be somewhere close by."

Ziva pursed her lips and they both looked around the apartment before coming to the same conclusion.

"It is not going to be in here," she said.

"No. But let's see if the building manager is around."

…

The man in his mid-30s who opened his apartment door to Tony and Ziva looked annoyed by the intrusion. TV-style gunfire was blaring from inside his darkened apartment, and it looked like there were crumbs of some sort stuck to his hipster moustache t-shirt.

"Help you?" he asked.

Tony and Ziva plastered on their best smiles.

"Hi there. Sorry to bother you," Tony said. "I'm John, this is my wife Sarah."

Ziva gave a little wave as the man's eyes slid over to her and looked her up and down. "Hi."

"We're friends with Bonnie and Kavita up on level two," Tony said. "And we've been talking to them about moving into the area. They said they thought there might be an apartment free in this building. Do you know anything about that?"

The building manager regarded Tony quietly for a moment. Tony kept his smile in place, even as he prepared for his bluff to be called. The manager looked him up and down, then looked at Ziva, then looked back at him and leaned against his front door.

"You two want to live in this place?" he asked them, incredulous. "It's mostly a dump full of kids in their twenties."

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but stayed silent when Ziva put both her arms around his waist. "Well, it's just that we're having a baby, and this neighborhood is close to my mom's house. It would be very convenient for us."

The manager looked down at Ziva's stomach and then back up at Tony. Tony gave him a douchey smile.

"Close to the monster in law. Can't wait!" he said, and then mimed shooting himself in the head. Ziva looked up at him with a scowl, and Tony shook his head and rubbed her back. "No, I'm just joking. I love your mom." He pressed a kiss to her head.

Ziva looked back at the manager. "Are there any vacant apartments in this complex right now?"

The manager looked between them again and relaxed a bit. Either he believed them or he just didn't care. "Uh, there is one up on the third floor. Number 302. But the owner's not renting it out right now. She wants to do some repairs and renovations."

"Oh," Tony said, sounding disappointed. "Do you know how long that'll take?"

He shrugged. "No idea. The last guy moved out two months ago, but I don't think they've even started working on it yet. Could be a while."

"That's a shame," Ziva said, and tilted her head back to look up at Tony. "Maybe we should check across the street."

"Sure," he said, and then tossed the manager a smile. "Thanks anyway. Let's go, honeybear."

They turned and walked up the hallway again, and then hung a left when they heard the building manager's door close. Ziva hit the elevator call button, and then turned to look at him with a thoughtful expression. It made Tony nervous.

"What?"

"I think you would have liked my mother," she said.

A small smile touched his lips. That wasn't what he'd been expecting her to say. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Did she like movies?"

"No."

"Did she like basketball?"

"No."

"Hmm." He tried to think of another potential common ground. He didn't want to hate on Eli so soon after his death, so he went for the most obvious connection. "But she liked you."

The corner of Ziva's mouth twitched upwards. "She seemed to."

"Well, that's something."

The elevator arrived and they stepped in together. Ziva pressed the button for the third floor, and he leaned back against the wall and looked at her curiously.

"Would she have liked me, do you think?" he asked.

Ziva crossed her arms and leaned back against the opposite wall as she took her time looking him up and down. The coy smile on her lips reminded him of the first time they'd met in the bullpen, and it did the same flip-flop thing to his insides now as it did back then. He broke into a nervous smile.

"What?"

"I think she would have been resistant at first," Ziva told him. "But then she would have realized what a good man you are. And she would have liked you very much."

For a moment Tony was frozen between making a joke and being sincere. He and Ziva had gotten a lot better in the last year at being earnest with each other, and honestly it was a huge relief. But it still wasn't habit, and he still wasn't ever 100 percent sure of her intentions when she was openly kind or warm to him. It was history's fault that he kept expecting the other shoe to drop. But after a few moments of staring at each other, he knew she wasn't setting him up for a fall. He smiled self-consciously and dipped his head.

"Well," he said, and then cleared his throat. "They say that mothers and daughters can be very similar."

"Sometimes."

They got to the third floor and stepped onto the landing. They knew from spending time on Bonnie's floor that apartment 302 would be down the hall and around the corner to the right.

"You got photos of your mother?" he asked as they walked down the hallway.

"Some. Why?"

He shrugged with nonchalance. "No reason. Just, you know. I showed you mine. You should show me yours."

Ziva looked over her shoulder at him with her Mona Lisa smile. "I thought you saw mine when I got out of the shower the other day."

He couldn't help grinning. "No," he insisted. "You were well covered up." He waited a beat. "I checked."

Her left arm came back to smack him very gently, and then she pointed ahead with her right hand. "There it is."

They approached the door and took a moment to listen for any noises on the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, Tony nodded at her and she reached into her coat pocket for her wallet. She pulled out a little lock pick from the centre compartment, put her wallet back in her pocket, and then knelt in front of the door. Tony kept watch for residents, not that he thought they had much chance of getting caught. It was the middle of the afternoon and Ziva could pick a lock in five seconds.

"Hey," she said suddenly.

His head snapped around to look at her. "What's wrong?" he asked, thinking she might have seen something or found an explosive or gotten the lock pick stuck.

But Ziva was glaring at him like he'd done something wrong. "You want to see a photo of my mother because you think women turn into their mothers."

He had the distinct impression that this conversation could go very wrong for him. "Um…"

"You think you can look into the future with that picture," she accused.

"I'm just curious about your mom," he half-lied.

Ziva's eyes narrowed further. "You want to know if I am going to get fat or look ugly."

Tony chuckled that away. "I don't see how that could ever be possible," he said charmingly.

She threw him a dirty look and turned back to the lock. With a twist of her wrist the door opened, and Tony held his hand out to help her up. She ignored it, and led the way into the apartment.

The layout was the mirror image of Bonnie's place downstairs and one apartment over. Galley kitchen leading into meals and living area, and a door to a hallway off the side. From where they stood the place looked empty.

"I will check the bedrooms," Ziva said.

Tony wandered around the empty room with a sense of disappointment. He didn't know what he was expecting to find. A couch set up in front of a TV that was recording live footage from Bonnie's apartment? A wall of photos of Bonnie going about her business, each individually signed by Eddie Hertzog? Probably not.

Ziva came back and shook her head. "Nothing."

"Nothing obvious," he said. "Shall we do a little snooping?"

She smirked at his polite invitation, and he sensed that she wasn't really mad with him about the photo of her mother thing.

"While we are here, it would make sense," she said.

Tony went to the kitchen and started opening cupboards and drawers. All he found were mice droppings and some bait. But when Ziva opened the hall closet, she hit pay dirt.

"Got it!"

Tony hurried over to see what she'd found. Stuck in a dark corner of the closet was a small laptop and a black box that was connected to it. Ziva opened the laptop, and they didn't even have to turn it on. It was running, and the black sleep screen switched to an image of Bonnie's living room.

Tony breathed out an expletive. "Look at that. He's recording her."

"He is vile," Ziva said in a low voice.

"No argument from me," he said, and pulled out his phone. He took a couple of shots of the set up.

Ziva closed the laptop and pushed it back to where she had found it. "The next time Eddie reviews the footage he will see that we have found his cameras. Do you think that will stop him?"

Tony got a sinking feeling in his stomach, and shook his head. "No. You?"

"No. He does not seem concerned about being caught out. He seems arrogant enough to think he will be able to talk his way out of any trouble."

"Maybe we should go to the building manager," Tony started, but stopped when he heard a noise outside the front door. His wide eyes met Ziva's, and he started pushing her into the closet so they could hide. But Ziva pushed him back.

"No! Bedroom!" she whispered, and they both took off running for the first bedroom.

Tony swung open the built-in closet door, and swore to himself when he saw it was only the width of the door and not even three feet deep. But he jammed himself in there anyway, turned to grab Ziva, and pulled her in with him. Ziva pulled the door closed, and everything went black.

"Brilliant," he started, but then made the mistake of lifting his head. He smacked it into the clothes rail, and then bit his lip to stop himself from crying out. He dropped his face to rest against Ziva's shoulder. "Ow," he whispered into her clothes.

"Shh," she said hissed, but then squeezed his hand.

He kept his eyes closed and head down as he listened hard for noises from the front of the apartment. He thought he could hear footsteps, but it was really hard to tell when his own heartbeat and breathing was so loud in his ears.

"Eddie?" he whispered.

"Don't know," she whispered back, and then pulled his hand down from where he'd unwittingly planted it right below her throat to rest an inch lower. He was going to apologize for the move, but then he realized the position he'd pulled her into in the closet. He was holding her very tightly from behind, with one hand now resting over her racing heart and the other wrapped around her waist and pulling her back into him. And now his face was pressed into her shoulder and he was sucking in the smell of her that made all of his nerve endings snap awake and his mouth water in preparation for licking it off her.

Was this awkward?

He tried to dump his inappropriate thoughts and started to relax his hold, but then he tensed again when someone walked into the room. He felt Ziva's chest rise as she sucked in a breath, and Tony held one right along with her. He started trying to think of what they could possibly say if they got caught either by Eddie or, worse, by the owner of the apartment. But then the person left and went to the next bedroom. They both let out their breaths as quietly as possible.

They stayed there for another minute or so as he person walked through the apartment. But as soon as the front door opened and then slammed shut again, Ziva pushed open the closet door and took off running. Tony stumbled out after her and rubbed at the slight crick in his neck from standing in the awkward position. He found her standing on her tiptoes at the front door and checking the peephole.

"You see them?" he asked as he came up beside her.

Ziva lowered herself to her heels and looked up at him. "I think it was the building manager."

Tony frowned. "Building manager? Why would he come up?"

Ziva lifted her right shoulder and then let it fall with a slight wince that she probably didn't expect him to notice. "Either he did not believe us and he was checking that we didn't come snooping, or he set up the cameras. Not Eddie."

"Or Eddie paid him off for access," Tony returned. "Is your shoulder okay?"

She looked fleetingly surprised at the question, but covered it well. "Yes, fine. We should look into the building manager as well. Just in case."

* * *

_Friday, 18 December 2015_

When she died, Bonnie had been staying in the bedroom beside the stairs at her mother's house. With memories of what she and Tony had found in her old apartment in her head, Ziva spent a good half hour that morning checking the room thoroughly for cameras or any other devices that might tie Eddie Hertzog to the scene. She checked every frame on the wall, but she came up empty she started checking the windows, the clocks, the bookshelf and the vents. When _that_ came up empty, she checked power points and lamps for bugs, upended chairs and looked under the desk.

Nothing.

She stood beside the bed and breathed heavily as she tried to work out her next move. There was a voice in her head—Tony's voice, to be specific—that told her to give it up. Bonnie had only been staying with her mother for a few weeks before she died, and surely that wasn't enough time for a man who was behind bars to find out where she was, somehow get recording equipment into the house and start building another photo gallery of her. Neither Bonnie's mother nor Kavita had mentioned that Bonnie had received more photos, and even if they were being taken, what did Eddie want them for? To plaster the wall of his cell with? No, it just didn't feel right to her.

And yet, she couldn't let it go. So even though Gibbs had told her not to investigate Eddie yet, even though Tony warned her not to go off on her own, even though she knew in her heart that she probably wasn't going to find anything, the thought that there _might_ be something made her keep looking. If there was even the slightest chance that she could come up with something that would keep Eddie in prison for the rest of his life, she had to look for it.

She checked her watch and estimated that she probably still had another half hour before her absence from work would be noted. With that in mind, she turned and headed for the bathroom to keep looking.

* * *

A/N: I wrote this chapter months ago and only just realized right before posting it that the 2013 action should have been from Ziva's perspective. I know it'll irritate some of you, so my apologies for the mistake. But I'm too drained to fix it (lazy writer alert). There is a reason I wanted to include Tony's POV.  
I'm getting behind on my responses to reviews, but a blanket thank you to everyone taking the time to drop me a line and tell me you're enjoying this. Your readership is sincerely appreciated.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: You're sort of getting two chapters in one today because I didn't feel like the first chapter had enough meat to it to keep you interested. I hope you like it.**  
**Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Friday, 18 December 2015_

"So, where were you this morning?"

If it were anyone else asking the question, Ziva would know that they were baiting her. Coming from Tony, the question would show suspicion. From Gibbs, she would assume it was actually a statement of condemnation. From McGee, it would be teasing. But from Quinn? Kind, non-jaded, tried-to-think-the-best-of-people Quinn? Ziva suspected it was just a normal question asked out of interest, and simply intended to spark conversation. Probably. But that didn't mean that she wanted to tell him.

"Nowhere interesting," she replied lightly and with a shrug, as she steered the Charger down the crossroad that would take them to the plumbing business that Ricky D'Augustino worked for. "I was running late."

Quinn turned his head in her direction. "Oh, really?" he asked, still not sounding anything but sincere. "Tony came by looking for you. He said you'd left home before him."

Ziva kept her expression neutral even as she cursed Tony in her head for (unwittingly) blowing her cover. "I did," she replied easily. "But I had to make a stop on my way in. It has to do with his Christmas present," she added on a whim.

Quinn shifted in the passenger seat as he became a little more engaged in the conversation. "Oh! What are you getting him?" he asked, as if they were conspiring together. "Is it related to a movie? _The Godfather?_ Is it a horse?" He paused and affected a very serious tone. "Ziva, are you buying Tony a pony?"

Ziva glanced at him, frowning at his over-eagerness and hoping that he was joking. "The present is not for you, Quinn. You do not need to be so excited."

Quinn shrugged. "I like Christmas. What are you getting him?"

In all honesty, Ziva didn't have a clue yet. And she knew she was running out of shopping days. "It is a surprise," she lied, and then deflected the attention from herself. "What are you getting Yasmin?"

"Hiking boots."

Ziva took her eyes off the road to look at him with one arched eyebrow. "Hiking boots?"

"She likes hiking," he said obviously. "We're going to go once a month this year."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Yeah," he said casually, before turning the tide on her. "Are you okay?"

Ziva paused as she caught up to the quick turn in conversation. "What?"

"Are you okay?" Quinn repeated, more carefully this time. And suddenly the innocence of his previous questioning ebbed away. "I know this case has a history with you and McGee. And McGee and Gibbs and Tony—especially Tony—have been hovering around you more than usual. I kind of got the impression this was a hard one for you."

Ziva clenched her jaw and took a corner faster than she should have. But her attempt at intimidating him into silence failed.

"I'm not asking for the details," Quinn went on. "I just need to know if my partner is going to be able to deal with the rest of this case."

Ziva bristled at the implication. "Have I given you any reason to think I cannot deal with it?" she demanded as the mood in the car quickly deteriorated.

Quinn took a moment to compose his reply. "I think you're skirting the edges of giving me a reason, yeah."

She narrowed her eyes at the road to cover the flash of guilt she felt at combing through Bonnie's mother's house that morning (especially when she had come up empty). For a moment she considered that Quinn knew what she had done, but she quickly dismissed it. There was no way he could know. Not even Tony knew. So what was he basing his accusation that she wasn't performing her duties effectively on?

"Please explain how I have been letting you down," Ziva fired at him.

Quinn sighed. "You're not letting me down," he insisted. "That's not what I'm getting at."

"What _are_ you getting at?"

"You haven't been yourself," Quinn said carefully. "You've been quiet and sad and then occasionally too angry—"

"_Too angry?_"

Quinn looked at her like she'd just made his point, but he didn't rub her face in it. "You're just not yourself," he repeated.

"And I assume you have been discussing your concerns with Gibbs," she stated, feeling the sting once again of Tony talking to Gibbs behind her back.

"No, I haven't," Quinn told her firmly. "I haven't discussed it with anyone. I'm not trying to catch you out here, Ziva. I'm on your side. This is me looking out for you and watching your back."

Ziva let out a bitter snort, and pulled the car up to the curb near the plumber's business at speed. She stood on the brakes so hard that Quinn had to put his hand out on the dashboard to brace himself.

"You already said that Tony, Gibbs and McGee are hovering," she pointed out. "You think I need yet another man looking after me?"

"I sincerely doubt that you need even one," Quinn replied, gingerly pulling the seatbelt away from his neck. "But I'm your partner now, Ziva. You've got to accept that. And you've got to be as honest with me as you would be with McGee. It's not just your ass on the line out here."

Ziva narrowed her eyes at him. "Do not worry about your ass, Quinn. I can assure you it is safer than mine."

Brown eyes narrowed back at her. "Hey, don't get angry with me," he said, taking her to task in the way Tony and McGee had never really been comfortable with. "I've brought it up because you're not acting like yourself. I like to think that you're my friend as well as my co-worker, okay? And if my friend is going through something—"

"You just said you were worried about your ass," Ziva cut in. "Do not try to spin this into something else when you have already showed your hand."

"Ziva," Quinn started, but she didn't care to hear what else he had to say. She popped open her door, got out and then slammed it hard.

She worked on composing herself again as she stomped down the sidewalk towards Ricky D'Augustino's place of business. _Screw Quinn_, she thought as she tried to put it behind her. He barely knew her or who she really was. She did not need to worry when he said she wasn't acting like herself, because he barely even knew what that meant.

She ignored the tiny voice in her head that told her otherwise.

Quinn slammed the car door and Ziva heard his quick footsteps on the sidewalk behind her. His long legs had him catching up quickly just as she swung open the door to Benny's Plumbing, and he was right behind her left shoulder as she approached the young woman sitting at a battered desk amid piles of folders and papers. On the wall behind her was a poster of a gleaming kitchen sink, and beside that a poster of a low-flow showerhead. There wasn't much else by way of decorations, and even the posters were stretching the definition. Ziva suspected that the shop front didn't get much foot traffic.

The woman behind the desk—her nameplate identified her at Sue—looked up at them curiously, and Ziva gave her a faint smile and held up her badge.

"Good morning. I am Special Agent David from NCIS. This is Special Agent Quinn." She gestured behind her. "We are looking for an employee of yours named Ricky D'Augustino."

Sue's eyes lingered on Ziva's badge, and then her thin eyebrows drew together in a frown. "What?"

Ziva took another deep breath to hold onto her frustration. "We are looking for Ricky D'Augustino," she repeated. "We need to speak with him. Is he here?"

Sue looked between Ziva and Quinn nervously, and Ziva watched a red flush spread up her neck to stain her cheeks. "Is he in trouble?" she asked softly.

"Is he here?" Ziva countered, letting an edge creep into her tone that was meant to warn her of Ziva's fading patience.

Sue looked down briefly, chastened. "Um, he's supposed to head out to a job now, but he might be still out the back." She got to her feet, smoothed down her skirt and stepped out from behind the desk. "I'll go check."

"We'll come with you," Quinn said in a way that sounded friendly, but which hid his suspicion. He did that a lot, Ziva realized, and suddenly it rubbed her the wrong way.

Sue gave him a tight smile and led them to a door at the end of the room. Behind the door was a larger room with a concrete floor and rows of shelving full of plumbing supplies. Three men in steel-capped boots, well-worn work pants and sweatshirts were standing around a small counter built into the wall that held a kettle, some canisters of sugar packets and instant coffee, and a toaster. Ziva recognized one of the men as Ricky D'Augustino. He and a much younger man who looked barely old enough to be out of high school were laughing at a much older man who seemed to be performing some kind of interpretive dance routine. They all stopped what they were doing when Sue called out.

"Hey, Ricky? There are some people here to see you."

Ricky looked between Ziva and Quinn quickly before his eyes settled on Ziva. The smile left his eyes as he seemed to size her up, and Ziva tensed in preparation to give chase if he bolted. Beside her, Quinn held up his badge and introduced them.

"Special Agents Quinn and David from NCIS," he announced. "Can we have a word with you, Mr D'Augustino?"

The clueless frown Ricky gave them seemed to be genuine, but he nodded. "I guess. I'm about to head to a job, though."

"We won't take up much of your time," Quinn told him in that same deceptively friendly tone.

Ricky glanced at the older man and gave him a shrug, and then headed towards Ziva and Quinn. "Won't be long, Mickey," he called back to his co-worker. "Make sure the van's all ready to go."

"Sure thing," the young kid said.

Ziva and Quinn parted so that Ricky could walk between them back into the shop front. Ziva followed him, and Quinn came in behind her. Ricky stood in the middle of the room and crossed his arms, and then looked down at Ziva. Up close, his size was imposing. But Ziva could be imposing as well.

"How can I help CSI?" Ricky asked with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Ziva didn't bother to correct him. She moved so that she was standing right in front of him with her shoulders squared. "We have some questions for you about a woman named Bonnie Stewart," Ziva told him, and then watched carefully for his reaction. There wasn't one. Not even a flicker of recognition passed through Ricky's eyes.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Dead woman," Quinn said from somewhere over Ziva's left shoulder.

Ricky glanced at Quinn, but returned his gaze to Ziva. "I don't know anyone called Bonnie," he told her.

"Are you sure?" Ziva asked as Quinn produced a photo and held it out to Ricky.

Ricky took it between his thumb and forefinger and peered down at a photo of Bonnie smiling in front of the NCIS base in Norfolk. After a moment he brought it closer to his face and narrowed his eyes, as if he was searching his memory.

"She kind of looks familiar," he said. "Maybe." He looked up at Ziva again, and she didn't see any deception in his eyes. His standoffish attitude from moments ago had faded, and even though they hadn't asked him much of anything, Ziva's gut told her he wasn't involved in Bonnie's death. "Why are you asking me about her?" he asked.

"We found a fingerprint at the crime scene that matches yours," Ziva told him.

Ricky's eyebrows went up. "What? Where was the crime scene?"

"Her house in Falls Church," Quinn told him. "Can you tell us where you were on Tuesday afternoon?"

"Working," Ricky said firmly, and then thought a bit harder. "Tuesday I was at a house in McLean for a blocked toilet, and then another place a couple of blocks away from here for a problem with a hot water system. I can give you records."

"We'll need to take a look at them," Quinn said.

"Sure," Ricky said, and took a step towards Sue's desk. He paused, though, when he took in the piles of papers there. "Uh…might need Sue's help with that."

"Have you been to any houses in Falls Church recently?" Ziva asked.

"I think I was there on Monday," Ricky said. "Problem with a kitchen sink."

Quinn took out his phone and flicked through his photos to find one of the front of Bonnie's house. He held it out for Ricky. "Does this place look familiar?"

Ricky tapped the screen. "Yeah, that's it. I reckon I was there Monday." He pointed at the photograph of Bonnie that he's given back to Ziva. "That coulda been her place. There was a blonde there. I mean, I can't be 100 per cent certain. I wouldn't be able to pick her out of a line up. But it could've been her."

"Did the woman seem nervous or upset at all?" Ziva asked.

Ricky shrugged his shoulders and gave what seemed like a self-aware chuckle. "Yeah. When I turn up at a place and it's a woman there by herself, more often than not they get nervous around me. I'm big and hairy, I get it. I try not to take offence."

Ziva wondered if Ricky's employer knew that the guy he was sending out to jobs where he'd be met by women home by themselves was an ex-con who'd done time for sexual battery. Ziva wanted to believe that people could be redeemed. She liked to think that _she_ had redeemed herself after acts she had committed at Mossad. And yet, she still felt that a leopard couldn't change its spots. What that said about her, she wasn't sure.

"We need to see those records," Ziva told him.

Ricky nodded and headed for the back door. "I'll get Sue," he said. He opened the door and Ziva watched him closely as he stuck his head into the back room. "Hey, Sue? I need a hand with your filing system."

As they waited for Sue to return, Quinn stepped up to Ziva's side. "I think he's clean," Quinn muttered.

"We need to check," she reminded him.

"Yeah, I'm just saying—"

"Rule number three."

"I know."

Sue returned to the office and gave Ricky a shy but flirty smile. "There's no filing system to speak of," she told him.

Ziva watched Ricky's eyes settle on Sue's butt as she walked back to her desk. She felt her stomach turn and looked up at Quinn. "Check the records. I am going to talk to the others."

"Got it," Quinn said.

As Sue and Ricky became preoccupied with records, Ziva slipped through the back door. Neither of the men who had been out there before were around anymore, but Ziva figured they wouldn't be far. She walked down a row of plastic pipes and silver fittings to where she had last seen them, and then spotted a back door that was open. Outside she found two plumbing vans and the young man, Mickey, who had been with Ricky before. He heaved a thin, coiled length of pipe off his shoulder into the back of the van and then slammed the door, and then turned around again. He jumped when he saw Ziva standing there, and then fell into an embarrassed smile.

"Sorry," he told her for no reason. "Didn't hear you come up."

"Are you Mickey?" she asked with a friendly smile.

He gave her a nod. "That's me," he said, and wiped his dirty hands on his pants like he was going to shake her hand. Ziva kept her hands deep in her pockets.

"I am Special Agent David," she told him again. "Do you work most days with Ricky?"

"Yes, ma'am," he told her as his cheeks flushed. "I just started two months ago. He's been taking me out to jobs with him while I learn how to do everything."

"Are you learning a lot?" she asked conversationally.

He nodded eagerly. "Yeah. He's been a good teacher."

"Were you with him on Monday and Tuesday?"

Mickey's eyes drifted for a moment as he thought about it. "Uh, yeah. Probably. I've been here all week, so…yeah."

"Do you remember going out to a house in Falls Church?"

His cheeks flushed again. "I don't know. Maybe. I don't know my way around some of the suburbs."

Ziva nodded and tried not to get frustrated with him. She took Bonnie's photo out of her pocket and held it up for him. "Do you recognize her?"

"Oh, yeah!" Mickey said, bobbing his head quickly. "Yeah, we saw her this week. It could've been Monday or Tuesday."

Ziva eyed him. "You are sure it was her?"

He gave her another embarrassed smile. "She was hot. I remember."

"Did you or Ricky talk to her much?"

He shook his head. "No. She was, like, busy with something in another room. Ricky fixed her kitchen sink and then we left. She didn't say much 'cept thanks."

"Okay," Ziva said, nodding. "What was the problem with her sink?"

"Blockage," he said confidently. "I haven't been here long, but I've seen a lot of those."

"Did you do any of the work yourself?" Ziva asked. They hadn't found anyone else's fingerprints in the kitchen except Ricky's. However they had not dusted the pipes under the sink. That was not routine.

Mickey shook his head and looked at his shoes. "No, ma'am. I'm not allowed yet. I just hand over tools and lend a hand when a third one's needed."

Ziva nodded. "What about Tuesday, at about four pm?" she asked. "Were you with him then?"

"Um, that was the day we spent, like, four hours on this guy's toilet." He made a face, then chuckled. "It was so gross."

Ziva took him at his word on that. "Well, thank you very much," she said, and turned to go.

"Hey, is Ricky in trouble?" Mickey asked her.

Ziva turned around again to look at him. He seemed worried. "Not right now. Why?"

He shrugged. "He's a good guy, is all."

Again, Ziva had to wonder whether the business knew about Ricky's background. Most businesses would do background checks on their employees, but not always. Still, it was not her place to enlighten them, as much as she wanted to.

Ziva gave him a tight smile and then headed back inside. Sue was back behind her desk and Ricky was sitting on the corner of it. Quinn stood facing them with a bunch of papers in his hand, and raised his eyebrows at her when she stepping into the room. Ziva gave him a nod.

"Thanks for your time," Quinn told Ricky. "We might be in touch if we have further questions."

Ricky shrugged and then let his eyes give Ziva the once over. "No problem."

Ziva bit her tongue and nodded at them, and then headed back out to the street. It took until she'd gotten to the car for her skin to stop crawling.

…

"Ricky D'Augustino has an alibi for the time Bonnie was killed," Ziva announced as she and Quinn returned to the bullpen. McGee and Gibbs both stopped what they were doing and looked up to hear more. "He was at a plumbing job in McLean."

Quinn held up the papers he'd gotten from Sue. "Plumbing business records confirm it."

"As does the trainee plumber he took with him to the job," Ziva added.

Gibbs opened his mouth, but Quinn pre-emptively answered his question. "We also called the homeowner, and he confirmed that he called Benny's Plumbers out on Tuesday to fix his toilet. And that a guy matching Ricky's description turned up at midday. Didn't leave until after four."

Gibbs sat back in his chair and laced fingers together behind his head. "How'd his fingerprint end up at Bonnie's?"

"He was there the day before to fix the kitchen sink, just like Bonnie's mother said," Ziva said, and then dropped into her chair. "He was very upfront, Gibbs. He was not involved."

Gibbs slid his eyes over to McGee. The senior field agent withered a little before nodding.

"Yeah, that just means that we have to work harder to find this guy who called her," he said. "I'm on it. Abby's on it. We'll get there."

"Get there faster," Gibbs said. He stood up and walked around to the front of Ziva's desk, where he pointed at her and then clicked his finger. "With me," he said to her.

Ziva got to her feet quickly and hurried after him to the elevator. She thought they might have been going to see Ducky, but when Gibbs stopped the car almost as soon as it started moving, she could have kicked herself for falling into the trap.

Gibbs turned in the dim light to face her. His face was blank, but she read the concern and suspicion in his eyes as clearly as if he'd been shouting about it. She drew a breath and removed her grip from the handrail as she braced herself.

"Where were you this morning?" he asked her, keeping his voice gentle for the time being.

"I had an errand to run," she told him, keeping eye contact. If Quinn had called him while she was outside talking to Mickey, she would break his thumbs.

Gibbs' eyes barely narrowed. "Ziva." He didn't believe her.

"I had an errand," she repeated. "I do not understand why this is so difficult for everyone to understand."

Gibbs shifted his weight to his other foot, and then back again. "It's not like you."

Ziva couldn't believe what she was hearing. Since when did Gibbs follow Quinn's wavelength? There were still days that passed when Gibbs wouldn't even _talk_ to Quinn simply because he wasn't Tony. But now they were both passing the same expert judgment on her?

"I run errands!" she argued, letting her arms come up and drop away quickly. "I have a house and a partner, and sometimes having those things lead to errands."

"You always run your _errands_ in the afternoon," Gibbs said.

Ziva snorted and rolled her head to the side. "Oh, for God's sake."

"You're never late," he added.

"Today, I was. And I apologize. Believe me, it will never happen again." She went to step around him to start the elevator again, but Gibbs blocked her.

"Do I need to be worried about you?" he asked gently.

"Because I have errands to run?" she asked, incredulous.

Gibbs didn't reply. He just looked at her until Ziva was clear that he knew she was lying, wouldn't press her for details, but expected an honest response if she wanted him to let her go without interrogating her further. And it _would_ be interrogation.

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. "I am fine," she told him, leaving the fight out of her voice. "Really."

"You can't make this thing personal, Ziva."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I understand," she assured him.

Gibbs nodded and turned to start the elevator again.

"Gibbs?" she said impulsively. "I want to interview Eddie Hertzog."

Gibbs looked at her like he couldn't believe she'd asked.

"I am not making it personal," she told him firmly.

"That's exactly what you're doing," Gibbs said crossly.

She held her hand up to plead her case. "No. Listen. It makes sense for us to interview the person who was sent to prison because of what he did to her. Don't you think he might hold a grudge?"

Gibbs stepped right up to her and looked her in the eye. "I thought he mostly went to prison because of what he did to you," he challenged.

Ziva swallowed down her unease at that. "I was a part of it," she agreed, hating that her voice weakened.

"A critical part," Gibbs said.

The comment sent a cold shiver down Ziva's spine, but she raised her chin so that he wouldn't know he was getting to her. "Thank you for the compliment," she shot back.

Gibbs gave her a knowing look and stepped back to a more comfortable distance. "We've got no cause, Ziva," he told her. "We got video of the guy who probably killed her, and it ain't Hertzog."

"What if they are working together?"

"We'll look into that once we know who the guy is." He turned to turn off the emergency brake, "We keep following the evidence now, Ziva. And if solid evidence points to Eddie? Then we'll talk to him."

She sighed in defeat. "Okay. Fine."

"Don't make it personal," he reminded her.

Ziva nodded and swallowed down the lump that was trying to form in her throat. "Nothing personal."

…

_She couldn't take a full breath. The air was too hot and dry, and every time she pulled it in it burned her throat and lungs until it felt like she was swallowing fire. The heat and dust scratched her eyes and rubbed her skin raw, but this pain was nothing compared with what he brought upon her every time he visited._

_Her adrenaline was already high when she heard the scrape and thud of his boots outside her cell. She tried to bite down her panic. She didn't want him to see her fear. She didn't want him to think he had broken her. She would endure the horror of what she knew would come next with stoic silence and not give him the pleasure of her cries. She would never beg him to end this. She would never let him know how much pain his body brought to hers. When he killed her, she would die without a sound. _

_He would get _nothing_ from her._

_She did not move from her dark corner when the door to her cell swung open. She expected to see him, but instead a thin blonde woman was thrown into the dust by Ziva's feet. She collapsed in on herself like a rag doll before lifting her head and baring her bruised neck. Bonnie's bright blue eyes screamed out her fear._

"_Help me!" she begged. "Ziva, help me!"_

"_You have to be quiet," Ziva heard herself say. The pain in her dry throat brought tears to her eyes. "Do not give in to them."_

"_Help me!" Bonnie screamed._

_Ziva moved to grab her and hush her, but she couldn't move her arms. She was weighed down—probably chained to the wall like she always was. How had she forgotten that? She looked down at her body and a crashing wave of panic slammed into her chest. There were not chains around her wrists. They were hands. Someone else's hands. And not just one pair. There were dozens. Hands all over her. Huge, male hands gripping on to every part of her body. Keeping her down. Keeping her where they wanted her._

_Ziva tried to throw the hands off her. She pulled at them and kicked and rolled on the ground. But the hands got tighter around her—they started hurting her and digging into her—the harder she fought them. They closed around her mouth and nose, and she smelled the cigarettes and beer over the dust and sweat. She wanted to vomit._

"_Help me!" Bonnie screamed again, and through fingers around her eyes Ziva could see a dozen men grabbing at Bonnie and rolling her around in the dirt._

_Ziva thrashed with all her might, but the hands kept holding her down. She felt them invade her. She was helpless. But there had to be a way out. Tony was here, wasn't he? Tony wouldn't let this happen._

"_TONY!" she screamed through the hands. _

_She smelled him there and turned her head. He looked beaten down as he sat beside her, and he reached his hand out to take the one of hers she had managed to free._

"_Just hold on," he told her with a voice like gravel. It didn't sound like him. "It'll be over soon."_

_She looked at Bonnie. The men had left her. In death, she was bent at an odd angle as blood trickled down her arms. Bruises rose quickly around her arms and her neck. Then hands closed around Ziva's eyes and the agony within her became unbearable. Dust filled her mouth and then her lungs. More hands found her throat and squeezed hard, choking her. Her fear skyrocketed and her heart rate spiked. The fire in her body suddenly switched to an icy chill that invaded every vein and nerve, and she knew this was the end. _

Do. Not. Scream_, she reminded herself. But then he was there, forcing her eyes open and holding her jaw in a crushing grip._

"_You will look at me," Saleem demanded, and then she felt herself falling._

Ziva landed on her bedroom floor and, barely awake but in a full panic, she scrambled to press her back against the wall. The nightmare was still in her head and under her skin as she blinked through the dark and tried to lay eyes on Bonnie. Where was she? Where was Tony? She drew in harsh, ragged breaths that she could only barely hear over the blood rushing through her ears and her heart pounding rabbit-fast.

"Tony?" she whispered harshly.

He didn't answer. Her panic shot up again. She couldn't work out why he wasn't there. She crawled back to the bed and grabbed her gun, and then pushed herself to her feet and swept the barrel of the gun around the room. No one, not Tony or anyone else, was there.

Ziva licked her desert-dry lips and edged her way out of the bedroom to the dark hallway. With each step some of her sense returned, and by the time she reached the top of the stairs she knew she was home, that Saleem was dead, and that Bonnie had died days ago. But she didn't know for sure that she was safe. She didn't know someone wasn't in her house to take revenge for her part in Eddie Hertzog going to prison.

She pressed her back against the wall as she started down the stairs, and her breath caught when she realized there was light coming down the hallway from the kitchen. She stopped halfway down the stairs and listened hard, and a sharp stab of fear went through her as she heard someone moving around. Ziva flicked the safety off the gun and crept the rest of the way down the stairs. Her socks muted the sound of her footsteps as she approached the kitchen, but she was sure whoever it was would be able to hear her heart. It was beating so hard it hurt. She raised her gun as she approached the door, steeled herself for whatever she would find, and then swept into the room. Her gaze immediately fell to the man sitting at the kitchen island, and she pointed her gun directly at his startled face. She stared at him for one blink, two blinks, as her adrenaline surged and her body started to shake. Then the message finally got from her brain to her arm that there was no threat, and she could lower her weapon.

Tony swallowed a bite of his sandwich. "Did I wake you?" he asked carefully.

Ziva opened her mouth to apologize for almost killing him, but couldn't find her voice. The only noise she made was from her shallow, ragged breathing.

Concern etched itself on Tony's face. "Ziva?"

She shuddered as if she'd been shocked, and then her nerve endings went haywire and she started shaking uncontrollably. Unexplained terror rolled through her, sending rivers of ice down her arms and legs. Noise filled her head and dark spots formed in her vision, and the pain in her chest from her racing heart started stealing her breath. It brought her nightmare right back again, and for a second she thought of the gun in her hand and how she could end this. But she couldn't move her hand. She couldn't move _anything_. She was paralyzed.

She had no idea how long it took her to realize Tony was right in front of her. His soothing voice broke through the noise, and she grabbed onto it like a lifeline.

"Breathe with me, Ziva," he said right against her ear. "Listen to me."

She tried, but it was like she didn't have control of her body. Images from her nightmare were flashing through her mind on a loop even though she tried to force them away, and as long as they were in her head, she couldn't stop her panic.

"Come on, Ziva," Tony said. "Follow my breathing."

She gasped and felt tears spill onto her cheeks. Her heart—God, her _heart_—hurt so much she was sure she was having a heart attack.

"Ziva, I want you to think about that time we went to the Bahamas last year," Tony said evenly, keeping up his patient effort to get through to her. "Think about that day when it was just you and me by the water. We swam in that warm, crystal clear water for hours. Remember that? It was so still and warm. We found that private little piece of beach, and it was so quiet. Just us. Remember that?"

Thoughts of torture in the desert started mingling with memories of paradise. Yes, she remembered. Just the two of them on a white sand beach—warm, fine sand, not the harsh and hot sand from the desert—on their first true vacation together. It had been perfect.

"And remember that night we stayed up?" he went on. "We watched the sunset, and then we spent the night just talking and drinking wine, lying in bed together until we watched the sunrise. Remember? We realized it was the first time we'd done that when we weren't on a stakeout. And I think I must've told you 20 times that I loved you."

Thoughts of that night slowly pushed aside her memories of hell in the desert. She'd laid beside him, on top of him, beneath him in the dark, and she'd never felt so relaxed or content. She drew a steadier breath and felt her panic drop a notch. She became aware that Tony wasn't just in front of her, but around her. He was holding her against his chest and had his arms around her, and one of his hands was stroking slowly but firmly up and down her back in time with his breathing. As he drew a breath, his hand slid from her lower back up to her shoulders. As he exhaled, his hand ran down her spine again. She started following his rhythm.

"Remember we made those plans to just disappear there and never come home? And then McGee called and ruined everything by insisting on being our moral compass?"

A laugh bubbled up from inside her at the memory, and then she drew a deeper breath. This time she noticed the wonderfully familiar and deeply loved smell of him all around her. It brought her further back to earth, and she was able to lift her arms and wrap them around his waist as she pushed her face into his neck.

"Stupid McGee," he said softly, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "I think we should still do it, sweetcheeks. Disappear in the Bahamas. How good does that sound?"

She nodded as the pain in her chest started receding. "Good," she said shakily.

He pressed another kiss to her cheek. "I'm full of good ideas."

Finally, Ziva was able to get her breathing more or less under control. Her fear started seeping away, and soon she was able to feel her feet on the ground again. Her chest still hurt a bit and she still felt shaky, but she gathered enough control over herself to force her eyes open and draw a deep breath.

Tony's hand left her back to brush her hair back over her shoulder. "You okay?"

She pulled back from him far enough to meet his eyes. She gave him a nod, but the look of worry on his face was so deep that it brought a fresh round of tears to her eyes. She rolled her eyes at herself and lifted her hand to wipe them away. "Yes," she told him.

He stroked his hand through her hair again. "You haven't had one like that for a while."

Ziva could only thank God for that. She had only had about four panic attacks like this in the years since Tony, Gibbs and McGee brought her back from Somalia, and that was plenty. The last one that had hit her this badly was soon after her father died. "No."

"What happened?" he asked. "You didn't think it was me down here?"

She shook her head and laid her hand on his chest. "No, I had a nightmare. I got confused."

"Bad one," he guessed.

"Yes." She drew another deep breath and blew it out again. "I am sorry I almost shot you."

Tony chuckled, and took her face between his hands and kissed her. "No, you didn't. Are you okay?" he asked again.

Ziva nodded, and despite feeling simultaneously drained and wired by the panic, she pulled away from him. "Yes." She rubbed her face and tried to focus on the normal in her life to calm her down. "Did you just get home?"

"About 20 minutes ago," he said, and reached to push her hair back over her shoulder. "Just wanted a sandwich. Sorry I didn't get home early enough to make you dinner."

"It is fine," she assured him, and looked around his shoulder at the clock on the oven. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight."

Ziva guessed she had about two hours' sleep. That was something, at least. She wasn't sure how much more she'd get tonight. Her panic attack had receded, but she was still wired and shaky, and she didn't want to have that dream again.

"Are you going to come back to bed?" Tony asked her.

She swallowed and shook her head. "No. You go. I just need to…" She tried to think of how to explain herself, but couldn't think off the words.

"Walk it off," Tony supplied.

She gave him a brief smile. "Yes. Walk it off."

He gave her a knowing look, and then took her hand and gave it a tug. "Come with me." He led her to the dark living room, where he toed off his shoes, took off his tie and then lowered himself to the couch. He gestured at her to come with him as he lay down and stretched out on his back. "Come on," he said under the strain of his back muscles trying to relax. "Snuggle up, sweetcheeks."

Ziva loved him for making the allowance for her mood and her issues, but she shook her head. "No, Tony, you've got to get up early tomorrow. Go to bed. I will be there later."

Tony shook his head. "Come here," he implored.

"Tony—"

"Come. Here," he repeated again, and held his hand out to her.

She relented. Tony could be exceptionally stubborn at times, and she knew from this particular tone of voice that he was using that he'd keep arguing until she grew tired of it, and then they'd both be left in bad moods. That held no appeal to her, so she planted her knee between his calves, braced herself on the couch cushions and maneuvered herself until she was tucked in comfortably between him and the back of the couch. She rested her head on the meat of his shoulder as Tony wrapped one arm around her and reached for the blanket slung over the armchair beside them, and then fanned it out over the top of them.

"I am okay," she told him again. "It was just a dream." She paused as Tony started rubbing his hand up and down her back, encouraging her to relax. "Bonnie was asking me for help. But we were in Somalia." She smiled wryly. "I am mixing up my traumas."

"Well, you're getting old. It happens," he said flippantly, and then kissed her temple to dull the cut he'd made.

Ziva breathed out a chuckle and hugged him a little tighter. She loved him for continuing to be himself right now and treating her like he normally would.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

No, she didn't. It was her natural inclination to wave it all away and pretend that it never happened and didn't bother her. But she knew it was important to Tony that she was open with him about these things. Being open with him, even when he couldn't do anything to change what had happened, showed him that she trusted him and needed him. He'd told her so in those exact words early on in their romantic relationship. And because she loved him, because she _did_ need him, she made the effort.

She drew in a deep lungful of the safe, loved smell of him to ground herself. "There were a lot of hands on me," she said, and her voice became thinner as emotion tried to rise to the surface. "Everywhere. Holding me down and squeezing me. And I couldn't help Bonnie as she was tortured and screamed for help."

Tony's hand kept its steady rhythm up and down her back as he tried to stay outwardly calm for her, and she heard him trying to keep his breathing even. He took stories of her time in Somalia, even the stories that happened only in her dreams, badly. But he listened to them. He said he wanted to help her. And he did.

"You are helping her, Ziva," he said, his voice barely wavering.

"Too late," she countered.

"Not your fault."

She only grunted at that.

"Where's the case at?" he asked.

"Nowhere," she told him with frustration creeping into her voice. "I interviewed a man who left a fingerprint in the kitchen. He is a plumber who had been called out there the day before. And he has an alibi for Tuesday. Our only other official suspect is the man who made the call to Bonnie soon before she died. But Abby and McGee are no closer to getting a good, useable image of him off the street surveillance cameras."

"They'll get there."

"I know."

He went quiet for a moment before putting a question to her. "Official suspect? Is there an unofficial one?"

"Only to me," she grumbled, still annoyed by Gibbs' refusal to listen to her.

"Eddie," Tony guessed.

"I know he is in prison," she said. "That does not mean he is not behind it."

"So, why don't you talk to him?"

"Gibbs says we do not have enough reason to yet." She popped her head up to look at him. "And that is not a plea for you to talk to him on my behalf," she said firmly. "I know you like to have your little chit-chats—"

"I won't interfere," he promised.

She held his gaze for a moment. Just long enough to be sure that he was being honest, and then lay down again. "Gibbs wants more concrete evidence of Eddie's involvement."

Tony went quiet again. Ziva didn't like it. It meant he was thinking, and probably thinking specifically about how to frame his argument against her.

"What?" she asked on a sigh.

"Why do you feel he's involved?" he asked. "Really. Make your case."

She sighed again and pushed herself up and off him, but Tony reached for her arm.

"No, come back," he said softly. "Don't get angry with me. I'm trying to help."

"I know you are," she told him as she pushed her hair off her face and found a comfortable sitting position. "I just cannot argue my point while I am lying on top of you."

"I don't have a problem with you trying," he said.

Ziva rolled her eyes at his predictability. "Not this time."

Tony put one arm behind his head, and rested his other hand on her thigh. "Okay. Shoot."

"Before Bonnie, he stalked at least three other women. But he got away with it. It was Bonnie who brought him down."

"So you think he holds a grudge."

"She hurt his pride," Ziva said. "And that was a big deal to him. The last time she hurt his pride, he got physical with her. When I hurt his pride, he almost strangled me to death."

Tony squeezed her thigh. "I agree he's not the kind of guy who'd just let it go when a woman gets one over him."

"It would not have been too difficult for him to find out that Bonnie had applied to be an NCIS agent," she went on. "So killing her would have turned into a _screw you_ to us as well."

Tony looked at her thoughtfully. "Yeah, but when we knew him, we weren't NCIS."

"At the trial his defense lawyer made the point that we used to be," she said. "And again, it would not be hard for him to find out that we were reinstated soon after he was sentenced."

Tony considered that, but didn't say whether or not he agreed with her. "What else?"

She swallowed and fought the sudden urge to rub her neck. "Strangulation is personal," she said. "It is about having power over someone. Eddie lost that power over Bonnie when he went to prison and she got on with her life."

"But he didn't personally strangle her," Tony said carefully. "He is in prison."

"Yes, but he could have instructed someone to do it that way."

He watched her quietly, and Ziva tried to implore him with her eyes to tell her she was right. But when he let out a long sigh, she knew he wouldn't.

"Ziva, you know I'm always on your side," he began, and it was all she had to hear to make her deflate. She fell back against the back of the couch with her arms crossed. Tony sat up and leaned closer. "Listen. I'm on your side, but there's no evidence. Gibbs is right. And you know it."

"I can feel it," she told him, lifting her chin defiantly.

"I don't doubt it," he said. "But there's nothing concrete here."

"If Gibbs would let me talk to him, I am sure that would change."

"Maybe it will," he agreed. "But you know what? Eddie's not going anywhere. So take the time to follow every lead, cross your 't's and dot your 'i's. Make it watertight."

She could have taken offence if she thought he was trying to tell her how to do her job. But she also knew the value in being reminded of the obvious at times. She smiled wanly at him.

"Is this one of the times when you want me to listen to and take your advice?" Ziva's deafness when it came to Tony's pleas or wisdom had been a bone of contention for a long time during their partnership, and particularly at the time when they had worked together on Bonnie's stalking case. But she had come a long way since then. Or at least, she hoped she had.

Tony gave her a knowing smile back. "Exactly," he said, and gave her a quick kiss.

She took a deep breath and calmed herself down to the point where she absorbed the information and felt it click inside her. If Tony and Gibbs—the two greatest allies she'd ever had—were telling her the same thing, at some point she became foolish for not listening.

"Okay," she said. "I will play Tony Knows Best on this."

He grinned at her. "I love that game." He gave her another kiss and then got to his feet and tugged on her hand. "Come to bed. I'm tired and I want to snuggle."

She wasn't ready to, but Tony did look tired—even more than he should have given the drama she made him deal with—and stressed out on top of it. She felt a stab of guilt for taking up all their time tonight, and a crushing wave of love for him.

"Did you ID the person your foot belongs to?" she asked as she stood up.

His head and shoulders dropped as they started towards the stairs. "Nope. No progress."

"Any hints?"

"A few, maybe." He shrugged. "I don't know. I think it's going to be a long one. And a puzzling one. The team is already tetchy."

She held his hand as they walked down to the bedroom, supporting him even if she couldn't help him. She got back into bed as Tony undressed and brushed his teeth, and when he got into bed beside her she snuggled into him like she knew he loved. He slid his arm around her and she tilted her head back to give him a soft, lingering kiss.

"I love you," she whispered to him.

"I love you, too," he told her. Then added, "Don't let me sleep in past five."

She smiled as he closed his eyes. "I won't."

It wasn't long before his breathing deepened and slowed, and his arm around her relaxed. But Ziva didn't follow him to sleep. For the next hour, as Tony twitched and gently snored, Ziva looked down the bed and out the window as snow started falling outside and thought about his good advice. She had known for a long time now that when it came to her, Tony often did know best.

She just wasn't sure that he knew best when it came to this case.

* * *

**Thanks to those of you still following. I know interest is waning, but it's so nice to see the same people come back every week to hang out.**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Rough seas ahead! Woohoo!  
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Tuesday, 2 July 2013_

It was a good day for stalking. Or Ziva supposed it was. She'd never stalked anyone before, exactly. Surveilled them, sure. Staked out, of course. The difference was that those had been sanctioned activities, either by the US government or Mossad. What she, Tony and McGee had been doing to Eddie Hertzog in the last few days, was not. So she supposed that no matter how noble their intention was, it was stalking. But Ziva was okay with that. As far as she was concerned, Eddie was a piece of crap who deserved whatever he got. If that included a taste of his own medicine, then so be it. It was just her luck that she pulled the stalking shift on such a nice, sunny day. Under normal circumstances, Ziva could have enjoyed sitting in the small park across from Eddie's workplace, basking in the sunshine and watching the world go by from behind her sunglasses. But today, she was focused on how she, Tony and McGee were going to close this case.

She had come to the conclusion that they had to spook Eddie into blatantly exposing himself as the one who had been stalking and terrorizing Bonnie. She didn't think it should be too hard, but honestly, she was struggling to think of a way to do it that didn't have the potential to get one of them arrested. Hacking, kidnapping with a view to interrogate, breaking and entering into his apartment or the apartment at Bonnie's complex to catch him in the act of recording her—all these things would be crossing the line for a private citizen. She wasn't worried about what an arrest for any of these activities would mean for herself so much as she was about what it would mean for Tony and McGee. The two of them had clean records and fairly clean reputations within the law enforcement community. In the event that Gibbs returned home and was able to argue for them to be reinstated at NCIS, it would hurt Tony and McGee's chances if they got in trouble with the law now. But Ziva had amassed a dozen strikes against her name in her time at NCIS, and while she hadn't said anything about it to the others, she had been trying to mentally prepare herself for the situation where the agency _couldn't_ take her back, let alone wouldn't. Perhaps she would be at this private investigation thing for longer than she intended.

Her cell phone rang then, and she pulled it out of her pocket and answered just as the wind whipped up. She turned her face into the breeze to keep the hair of her face. "David," she answered.

"It's us, you're on speaker," McGee said to her.

"What is going on?"

"We looked at the super in Bonnie's building," McGee told her.

"And he is a registered sex offender?" Ziva asked hopefully, even though she knew it was unlikely.

"He's a boy scout," Tony informed her. "Squeaky clean record. His Facebook page is full of comic book crap and photos of computer game stuff that you and I will never have any hope of understanding."

"That does not mean he is not stalking Bonnie," Ziva pointed out. "Or helping Eddie to do so."

"Yeah, but they're not friends, and Bonnie has a private profile," McGee said. "It's unlikely he's stalking her online."

"And he also claims to have a girlfriend," Tony took over. "We checked her out and the relationship seems legit. It still doesn't mean he's not involved in this, but…"

"He is not involved in this," Ziva finished for him, feeling it in her gut. A car with a brutally loud engine came down the street, and she lifted her free hand to cover her ear so she could hear Tony and McGee.

"I don't think so," Tony agreed. "I think he was just suspicious of us. Which I personally find offensive."

Ziva smirked to herself before McGee pointed out the obvious.

"He _should_ have been suspicious of you. You were lying to him."

"I lie to people every day and they don't get suspicious of me," Tony argued.

"We're always suspicious of you," McGee muttered.

"Well, I lie to you the most, Timmy." Tony moved on. "Where are you, Supergirl?"

"Outside Eddie's workplace," she replied, and then sighed with the frustration that had been growing within her. "This is taking too long. We cannot just keep following him and waiting for him to slip up. It is wasting time and putting Bonnie at higher risk every day."

"Well, we can't just drag him in and interrogate him, Ziva," McGee pointed out.

"I know that," she said testily, and then looked around to make sure no one else in the park was paying attention to her. "But doesn't it bother you that we are sitting here and not doing anything to help this woman?"

"Ziva, we are helping her," Tony said calmly, and Ziva rolled her eyes a little to herself. Tony always took over and used that tone of voice when he, McGee and Gibbs had decided she was getting too upset. "It's just taking longer than we're used to. But we'll get him."

Ziva didn't think that was good enough. "She came to us for help and all we are doing is following him. That is not helping. And he is still harassing her with those photos."

"Ziva," Tony started, but she ignored him.

"I think we need to shake the cage," she told them.

"Ziva," he tried again.

"He does not seem to like being challenged, yes?" she went on. "Bonnie and his ex that you and I spoke to both suggested he needs to be the one in control. When he is not, he is forced to deviate from his plan. So we should challenge him. We should apply pressure and make sure he knows we are on to him. We will force him to react and perhaps out himself as the harasser."

"Okay," Tony said slowly. "Let's regroup tonight and we'll all come up with a plan together."

"We should make sure Bonnie and Kavita are in a safe place first," McGee piped up.

"We'll take them to my place," Tony said. "But we'll work out the details once we're all back here. Ziva?"

"Agreed," she said, feeling a touch of relief at being heard. "I will be back later." She hung up and slid her phone back into her pocket, and then turned her face back into the breeze. She felt better, knowing they were going to take action. She hated being idle, even on a gorgeous sunny day that she could have been enjoying. She had been in the park for a while now, using a book as a cover to linger, and she was beginning to get antsy. Stalking—surveillance, a stakeout, whatever—was always the worst.

She checked her watch. It was just after 1400, and Eddie hadn't left his office building since he'd arrived that morning. On the days that McGee and Tony had followed him, he hadn't left until 1800. Ziva didn't particularly feel like waiting around for another four hours, but she didn't want to go home yet. There was one thing that she had wanted to do for a few days—checking out Eddie's place—and maybe today was the day to do it. It would leave her feeling as if she had done at least one productive thing that day. She considered calling Tony and McGee back and letting them know of her plans, but in the end she didn't bother. If she found anything useful or interesting, she would fill them in when she got home. No harm done.

Ziva put her book back in her messenger bag and then pushed herself to her feet. Casting a final look over at Eddie's building, she headed off towards the Metro.

…

Ziva was vaguely familiar with Eddie's neighborhood. When she returned to the US after her time in Somalia she had been looking at an apartment just a few blocks away and had done a few walks around the streets. She thought she remembered looking at the complex of two-storey townhouses that Eddie lived in and thinking they looked nice, mostly due to the established garden at the front of the complex that had two ancient and leafy trees leaning over the entryway. After returning from the desert, all she had wanted to surround herself with was grass and trees.

Today, those trees might give her a bit of cover as she snooped around Eddie's place. She walked confidently up the path like someone who knew she belonged there, and then paused when she came to a fork in the path, and looked around at the numbers on the apartment doors around her. Eddie's place was to the left and one house back from the street, but Ziva didn't go straight for it. Instead, she approached one of the two apartments that overlooked Eddie's courtyard and knocked on the door. She needed to know how many people were around who could potentially witness her poking around. At this time of day and in this neighborhood, she hoped there wouldn't be many. But if they were there, she could just pretend that she had arrived at the wrong door and leave without raising suspicion.

No one answered the door, so Ziva moved to the next one. After waiting half a minute she was satisfied that no one was home, so she approached Eddie's place. His front door faced his neighbor's, and a few feet on from that was a gate and a six-foot brick wall that enclosed his private courtyard. She wasn't interested in getting into Eddie's apartment right now. Although she was sure that she would be able to break in, it had the potential to go very badly for her if she was caught and, by extension, bad for Bonnie. But the courtyard, although it was still private property, seemed like a safer choice.

She glanced around her to make sure the coast was clear as she reached for the gate and tried to open it. She wasn't surprised to find it was locked. There didn't seem to be any keyhole to fiddle with, and there was no hole to reach through to feel for a latch on the other side. Ziva sighed to herself and looked up at the wall. She would have to get her ninja on. She took a few steps back, pushed her bag all the way behind her hip and out of the way, rolled her shoulders, flexed her fingers and took one more look around her. Then she ran at the bricks, leapt and planted her boot against them, and grabbed onto the top of the wall. She used her momentum to push herself up and swing her legs over the bricks until she was sitting on top of the wall, then checked the ground beneath her to make sure it was clear. When she was sure she wouldn't land on anything dangerous, she pushed herself off and dropped to the ground.

The courtyard was fairly small, as Ziva expected it would be. She would be able to cross it in less than ten strides, but it was large enough to accommodate a small table and two chairs, a potted plant and a bike. There was also a plastic rolling cart by the gate of the type Ziva used for her trash. In a complex this size Ziva would have expected that all the trash would be collected from a communal dumpster, but perhaps Eddie used the cart to cut down on the number of trips he took to get rid of his garbage. She headed over to it, hoping that she would be luckier than she was used to being. But as soon as she flipped the lid she felt that familiar sinking feeling. The cart was empty, so she wouldn't be able to go through Eddie's trash and find the file she assumed existed in pristine condition entitled _Proof I am stalking Bonnie Stewart_. She let the lid fall shut.

The rear of Eddie's house was made up of floor to ceiling windows and a sliding door onto the courtyard. The curtains were open but the door was locked, so Ziva leaned towards the glass and looked inside. There was a fairly neat living room, a couch and a coffee table in front of a flatscreen TV. A game console was on the floor, and a laptop of the same type that she and Tony had found in Bonnie's building was on the couch. Closer to the window a small desk was pushed against the wall. It had a small printer on it and a neat stack of papers, and Ziva walked along the window until she was as close to the desk as she could get. It looked to her like there was a printed photo on top of the file, and she cupped her hand around her eyes to block out the sun and the glare to help her see it better. It looked like it had been taken outdoors, but she couldn't tell much more than that, let alone whether it was another photo of Bonnie. It was upside down from her and at an angle. There was nothing else on the desk that looked incriminating. No photos of Bonnie on the walls or DVDs marked with her name. No poster tacked to the door with Eddie's step-by-step plan for stalking his ex-girlfriend and causing her harm. It just looked like a normal apartment.

Ziva sighed to herself as she deflated. She hadn't expected to come over here and find anything outright incriminating. If she could get her hands on that laptop, it might be a different case. But she didn't have any right to evidence like that these days. The loss of that power was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with.

There was no reason for her to stick around, so she went back over to the gate to let herself out. She was surprised to find a deadbolt on the gate, and annoyed when she found it locked tight. She cursed to herself and looked up at the wall again. She could drag a chair over to it to help her over, but that would only tip Eddie off that someone had been there. She would have to do another ninja move.

She dumped her bag over the top of the wall first, and then backed up and took another run at it as she had before. At the top of the wall she checked for witnesses, and then swung her legs over. Or she attempted to. As she pulled her left leg around the heel of her boot caught on the brick, and before she knew it she was tumbling gracelessly to the ground six feet down. She gasped in shock and threw out her right arm to brace her fall, but not fast enough. She landed heavily on her right shoulder that hadn't healed properly from the car accident months ago, and then felt a sharp pain in her left knee. For a few moments she lay still and did an inventory for broken bones or numbness, but as soon as she decided that she was fine she quickly scrambled to her feet and grabbed her bag before taking off.

Her shoulder started throbbing painfully by the time Ziva made it to the front of the apartment complex, and she reached around herself to hold onto her arm with her left hand as she walked quickly down the street. She waited until she had turned a corner before she chanced a look down at herself. Blood was seeping through her pants over her left knee, her right hand was grazed and it looked and felt like her right elbow was bleeding too. She decided she would be fine if she could just get home and clean herself up, but after walking another block towards the Metro station she had second thoughts. The patch of blood on her knee kept getting bigger and the wound she'd sustained was beginning to burn and ache badly. But the worst was her shoulder. It felt like she'd been hit by an SUV all over again. Every jolt from her steps sent a sharp, stabbing pain through the joint, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. She took a break and leaned against the wall of a pet food store.

She had a couple of options here. One, she could get on the Metro and get home, clean up and take some painkillers. Two, she could get on the Metro and go to the hospital to get the stitches she suspected her knee required. Three, she could call McGee for a ride and make him take her home. Four, she could call Tony, ask that he take her home, and then probably get taken to the hospital anyway. Frankly, she liked the McGee option. But she knew it would turn into the Tony option, because McGee would just tell Tony what was going on. Then Tony would get all _Tony_ about it, come and get her himself, argue with her about why she'd called McGee instead of him, argue with her about going to the hospital versus going home, and then take her to the ER anyway.

She sighed and cursed to herself, then pulled out her cell phone to make a call.

"Hey, you still watching Eddie?" Tony asked when he answered.

"No," she said, and she was surprised and embarrassed by the way her voice trembled. She cleared her throat and tried again. "No. Can I ask a favor?"

"Depends on how personally embarrassing it will be."

"For you? Not at all," she assured him. "For me? Very."

Tony perked up. "Then ask away."

She drew a staggered and pained breath that she hoped he didn't hear, and hoped she wouldn't throw up like she suddenly wanted to. "Could you please take my car and come pick me up?"

"Okay," he said easily, although there was a touch of disappointment in his tone that told her he'd hoped for something far more embarrassing than that. "Where are you?"

She swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut as she braced for the direction the conversation was about to go. "Near Eddie's house."

Tony was quiet for a moment. "Okay," he said at length.

Ziva answered the question he hadn't specifically asked, but had been implied. "I thought I would come by while he was at work and look around."

"Ziva. McGee talked us out of that," he said warningly. "Because we're just civilians, remember? We all ended up agreeing that we wouldn't break into his apartment."

"I did not break into his apartment," she assured him.

"Okay," he said again, slowly and carefully.

"But I fell down."

"You fell down?"

"Yes. And I might need your assistance in getting to the ER."

There was another beat of silence. "Okay. Can you wait for me, or would an ambulance be a better call right now?" he asked with forced calm.

"No, I can wait," she replied, trying to sound like she didn't want to cause a fuss.

"How did you fall?" he asked, and Ziva heard noises over the line that made her think he was moving around the house.

"My foot got caught on a wall."

"Huh?"

She bit her lip. "The wall around Eddie's courtyard," she admitted. There was no point in lying to him. He would find out eventually, and lying about it would just piss him off. Ziva was sick of pissing him off.

"You said you didn't break in," Tony said, beginning to sound like he was indeed pissed off.

"Which is the truth!" she insisted. "I did not set foot inside his apartment."

"Just in his courtyard."

She shrugged to the street. "It seemed less illegal."

A door slammed on Tony's end of the line before he muttered at her. "Ziva, there aren't really shades of illegal for us anymore. McGee's right about that."

"I know, but I did not get caught," she snapped back. "Are you still inclined to pick me up?"

"I'm coming now," he told her. "And then we're going to have a talk."

Ziva hung up and clutched her phone in her grazed hand, and she resisted the urge to bash her head against the wall behind her. Why did she have the feeling that the _talk_ would end in tears?

…

The ER wasn't that full when Tony and Ziva arrived, and they had only had to wait about half an hour before Ziva was taken to be examined. After a check for head and neck injuries and some poking, prodding and manipulation of Ziva's knee and elbow, she'd ended up with a bandage on her elbow and two stitches in her knee. But as Tony stood beside her and watched her treatment like a hawk, she hadn't been able to stop herself from wincing, cringing and generally confirming that she had done a lot more damage to her shoulder than she had expected. Her range of movement was pathetic, and the doctor had insisted that she go and get an x-ray to see the extent of the damage.

After the x-ray she had been wheeled back to her emergency room bay, where Tony had been waiting the whole time. She expected that he would give her a smile tinged with worry when she came back in, but in fact he'd met her with a blank expression that put her on edge. After the orderlies put her bed in position and told her to wait for the results of the x-ray, things between their curtains of 'privacy' got tense. Too tense for that little space, which Ziva didn't think was big enough to handle Tony's mood. He had been mostly stony silent on the drive over after seeing the large stains on her knee and elbow, and she'd been able to feel his frustration with her like a tangible object between them as the ER doctor had examined her. She did feel a little badly that she had trespassed while knowing it was illegal, but not because she had infringed on Eddie's privacy. She felt badly because after her phone call with Tony and McGee, it had been implied that they would work out their next move together. But she had made a move without informing her partners. She would owe them an apology tonight, of course, but she didn't understand why Tony was _so_ mad right now, and his silent punishment was beginning to make her feel more than a little indignant.

She glanced at him sitting in the chair beside her and found him doing his impersonation of Gibbs. He sat perfectly still with his jaw clenched, and was staring with simmering anger at the hallway beyond their curtains. Ziva sighed heavily to herself, and then winced at the sharp pain the breath sent to her shoulder. She cursed Bodnar once, and then herself half a dozen times, including once for being too weak to just suck it up and deal with it. If this were ten years ago, she wouldn't even be in the hospital. She would have just taken a painkiller and fought through it. Just like she had when she had been chasing Bodnar.

Tony spoke up then, interrupting her thoughts and making her jump. "That's the same shoulder you hurt when—"

"Yes," she told him.

He went quiet again, and Ziva thought he was probably thinking of that night they'd been in the car accident and the events it triggered, and getting mad at her again over her actions with Bodnar. Anger and guilt over getting him caught up in the mess and almost getting him killed burned at the back of her eyes, and she turned her head slightly so that he wouldn't see her emotion.

"It never healed properly, did it," he said. It was a statement, not a question. From his tone, Ziva could tell he was annoyed with himself (and probably her) for only just working it out.

Ziva swallowed and told a half-truth. "It is mostly fine."

He thought for another moment. "It didn't heal because you had that fight with Bodnar," he said to himself, before addressing her again. "Have you been in pain in your shoulder this whole time?"

She sent him a dismissive glare out of the corner of her eye, but without bothering to turn her head she doubted he saw it. "No. Why does it matter?"

"Because we care that you might be in pain," he said slowly, as if explaining it to a five-year-old.

The fact that her shoulder hurt when she exerted herself was her own fault, and Ziva didn't see any reason to request sympathy over it. "It is not important. Don't worry about it, Tony."

He swore to himself, and then shifted in his chair to face her and rested an elbow on her bed. "Okay, I've got to ask. What part of _We'll come up with a plan together_ wasn't clear to you?"

She turned her head back to him as her indignation grew. "I saw an opportunity—"

"But it wasn't an urgent one," he cut in, and then lifted his eyebrows in challenge.

He was right, but Ziva had never liked being told that she had done something wrong, and she was naturally inclined to argue against it. "So none of us can make autonomous decisions anymore?" she asked.

"Not when they lead to one of us ending up in hospital."

"You do not have to mother me, Tony," she told him angrily.

Tony scoffed. "Jesus, sometimes I feel like _someone_ has to, you know?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Ziva caught two nurses who were passing pause and look into the bay. She shot them a look that told them to go away before refocusing on Tony. "What does that mean?"

"You don't listen!" he threw at her, seemingly unconcerned that he could be drawing the attention of hospital staff and other patients. "Least of all to me anymore. What's going on with you?"

She felt her cheeks flush with what she suspected was shame over how she knew she'd treated him in the weeks leading to their resignation. But she continued to plead ignorance as she fought for absolution. "I do not know what you are talking about."

Tony leaned closer to her as his frustration with her peaked. "I'm talking about when I say something to you, tell you _exactly_ what I want or _exactly_ how I'm feeling about something, and you completely ignore it. I tell you we need to come up with a plan together, and you ignore it. I tell you you're not alone, and you ignore it. I tell you I will always have your back and do anything to help you, and you ignore me and go to someone else. I feel like if I told you I thought it'd be a bad idea to jump off a bridge, you'd suddenly decide that jumping off a bridge was a vitally important thing for you to do. And I don't understand it!" he went on, gesturing with his hands now as he got more and more worked up. "I'm only ever looking out for you. All I want is for you to stop getting hurt by people from your past or strangers now or, God, even _yourself_. I just want you to be safe and loved, and it's like you actively refuse it. I don't get it, Ziva. It makes me _crazy_. Why don't you ever listen to me?"

Ziva stared at him in shock. Clearly, this was something he had been thinking about and holding in for some time, and today he had tumbled over the edge of his restraint. And it cut her, because she knew he had every right to feel that way. She knew she screwed up all the time, especially when it came to being a good partner to him. Of course she would go to the ends of the earth for him. She'd lay down her life without a second thought and throw away everything she had to save him. But she also knew that sometimes she truly sucked at listening to him. And even worse, she knew it was deliberate. Sometimes she ignored him, as he so painfully put it, because she knew involving him would get him hurt, get him in trouble, or just show her up for wrong about something. But there were other times when she didn't have a clue why she acted the way she did.

Or she did know, and she was just too scared to put the thoughts into words.

She didn't know how to apologize for things that she didn't understand, and part of her hated sitting here and being scolded like a child. As with so many of her choices when it came to Tony, Ziva could either fight the fight or retreat from it. And even though her gut told her it was the wrong move, she leaned towards fighting.

"I _do_ listen to you," she told him, trying to make herself believe the words as she said them. "Me being here now has nothing to do with me deciding to go to Eddie's place without you—"

"It has _everything_ to do with it!" Tony practically yelled. "You're here—you're hurt again—because you went off script—"

"I could have fallen in the street and have this happen!" she cut in.

Tony took a moment to breathe, and then lowered his voice to a tone that made a not entirely pleasant tingle shoot up her spine. "You are not seeing the bigger picture, Ziva."

She opened her mouth to throw more weak arguments at him, but was saved when the ER doctor walked into the bay with films of Ziva's x-ray. The two of them shut their mouths and looked at the doctor as if nothing was wrong, and the doctor looked back at them as though he knew he'd walked into something nuclear.

"Everything okay in here?" he asked.

"Yes," Ziva said quickly, and sniffed away any tears that might have been threatening to fall. "Fine. Is my shoulder fine?"

The doctor threw a suspicious glance at Tony that Ziva immediately felt crappy about, and then held one of the films up to the light for her. "No, your shoulder's not fine. You've got a fracture of the scapula on top of another one that looks like it hasn't healed." He looked at her in question. "Did you have another accident recently?"

She sighed with frustration aimed entirely at herself. "I was in a car accident in May," she told him.

"That'd do it," the doctor said. "Did you know you had this injury?"

"Yes," she admitted through gritted teeth.

The doctor looked slightly confused. "Okay. And what was the treatment back then?"

Beside her, Tony crossed his arms and leaned all the way back in his chair. She couldn't bring herself to look at him. "I had a sling."

"Which she wore for about two hours and then tossed," Tony threw in.

Ziva closed her eyes, bit her tongue and took a deep breath. When she was calm enough, she looked up at the doctor. "I did not wear the sling for the whole time that the doctor advised me to," she admitted with forced restraint. "And I did not follow up with physiotherapy."

The doctor looked between them. "Okay. You probably should have done that."

"Probably," she allowed. "So, will I just get another sling now?"

He nodded. "Yes, we'll get you a sling that you definitely have to wear for a while. And we'll give you some meds. But you're probably going to need surgery, Ziva. Otherwise you're going to have problems for the rest of your life."

Ziva almost rolled her eyes. She believed him, but surgery wasn't going to happen right now. Not while she was basically unemployed and had just spent most of her money on a house. "Okay," she said, even though she had no intention of following through.

"We should make an appointment for you to see a specialist to make sure," the doctor went on. "You might get lucky and just need rehab. But I have to be honest that I don't think that's the case. I wouldn't be surprised if you'll need a full reconstruction."

"Fine," she said flatly, not really listening anymore. "I will take a referral."

The doctor looked justifiably dubious, but nodded and backed away. "I'll go get one sorted for you and get you a prescription for some pain killers. Do you have any allergies?"

"No."

"Okay. You can get dressed again," he said. "And we'll get you out of here as soon as we can."

Ziva nodded her thanks, and the doctor swung the curtain all the way shut. Tony stood and grabbed her clothes from where he'd placed them on top of her bag when she'd gotten into her hospital gown for the x-ray, and placed them on the edge of her bed. Then he walked out without a word.

If she thought he'd unloaded all his anger and frustration on her before, she knew he'd just been handed another magazine of ammunition to fire at her later.

…

The ER doctor got sidetracked on a car accident victim on his way to getting Ziva's prescription and discharge papers, so Ziva and Tony ended up waiting another hour and a half in near silence before they could leave the hospital. They finally got back to Ziva's house just before 10pm, by which time Ziva was ready to take all the painkillers in the bottle she'd gotten and go to sleep for a hundred years.

She followed Tony tiredly up the path to the front door and then passed him on the way inside as he held the door open for her. She heard his keys land on the hall table before he swung the front door closed, and she reset the alarm. She couldn't wait to get upstairs, have a shower and leave the day behind her. But of course, Tony had other ideas.

"Why don't you trust me?" he asked suddenly.

Ziva sighed so hard she very nearly cried, and barely glanced in his direction lest the sight of his face right now make her break down. "Tony, I cannot do more of this right now," she said softly. "And you know I trust you."

"Just not with your physical or emotional wellbeing," he returned.

Tears stung the back of her eyes. "Tony, I _can't do this now_," she repeated, begging him to understand, and then left him by the door as she went down the hallway and through the kitchen to make sure that the back door was locked. Satisfied that the ground level was secure, she walked back up the hallway to the front door. Tony still stood where she'd left him, and she made the mistake of meeting his eyes. He looked so hurt and defeated that Ziva literally had to close her eyes against it. She knew it was her fault—it was always her fault—but she still didn't know how to fix it. She didn't know how to tell him what he needed to hear.

"Goodnight," she whispered as she passed him, and started up the staircase.

"You make me feel like I'm useless."

It wasn't just the utterly vulnerable statement that stopped her in her tracks. It was his voice, so strained by emotion that she felt it rip apart her insides and finally bring tears to her eyes. The truth was that he was absolutely _essential_ to her. But if all she did was make his face look like that and his voice sound like that and his heart hurt like it obviously did, what were facts worth?

She let out a slow, barely controlled breath, blinked away her tears and turned slightly to look down at him. "You feel useless because I did not tell you that my shoulder hurt?" she challenged.

His hurt turned to blind frustration, and he advanced on her. "Because of everything I've already said tonight."

"Are you surprised?" she challenged, and started taking her anger with herself out on him. It was what she was good at. "You know me to be selfish and pig-headed."

"Oh, Jesus, Ziva!" he hissed. "That's not what I said!"

"But it is what you feel," she surmised. "You have been very good at sharing your feelings tonight, so please continue to be upfront with me." She spun around again and continued up the staircase. Despite just inviting him to share more of his thoughts, she actually didn't want to hear another word. Tony probably knew it—he'd witnessed every fury she'd lost herself in over the last eight years, and he knew her better than anyone else ever had. But he could be pig-headed too, and he followed her up the stairs to continue the argument he knew she didn't want to have.

"It's not what I said," he repeated to her back. "I'm making the point that you insist on doing everything yourself when you don't need to."

"I _like_ doing things myself!" she threw back at him. "I am good at it."

"You're _terrible at it!_" he yelled as they made it to the top of the stairs and passed McGee's closed bedroom door. "You try to handle things so you don't get any of us hurt or in trouble, and it always backfires!"

He'd hit the nail on the head—Ziva knew it—but she couldn't help taking offense when she was already so emotional. "Thank you so much for your honest opinion of my abilities."

"Your abilities are fine," Tony told her. "It's your goddamn martyr complex that you need to get rid of."

She led him into her bedroom. "So I am selfish _and_ a martyr?" she asked as she spun to face him.

"You're not selfish!" he yelled. "I never said you were. And I know what you're doing now, Ziva," he said, stepping into her personal space and pointing a finger at her. "You're twisting this so that I get mad at you and blame you, and then you think you'll have succeeded in pushing me away to protect me. You're not so complicated, you know."

Exasperation stole her control as Tony crawled up inside her head and heart, and Ziva threw up her left hand as she surrendered. "God! Why do you always make me feel like I have to be better?" she demanded.

Tony looked clueless. "Better than what?"

"Than who I am!" she yelled at him. "I am selfish, Tony! I am selfish and I use the people I love to further my own agendas! I suck the life out of people until I do not need them anymore and then I _throw them to the wolves!_ I am stubborn and single-minded and you can only ever rely on me while I still need you. So stop acting like I am better than that and that you can save me. I am _beyond_ saving!"

The outburst was her equivalent of the torrent he'd unleashed on her in the hospital. It was the voice to the thoughts she'd always held in the darkest parts of her mind. She could feel the tears on her cheeks, and her breath came in short, shallow and shaky puffs as Tony stared at her. She had shocked him into silence, but his eyes told her everything. He hated hearing this, but there was a part of him that didn't exactly disagree. And although she was the one who had thrown it out there, his reaction was the thing that killed her.

She closed her eyes again and wiped her cheeks with a shaking hand, and when she felt like she could talk again without screaming or crying, she finished her thought. "You know the terrible things that I have done," she said, almost gently in comparison to the harshness she'd delivered before. "People like me will never be redeemed, and you need to accept that. I will never be the person you think I should be. I do not know how to be that person."

Tony watched her for a few moments, and when his eyes fell away from her face and found the floor she thought that meant that he was finding acceptance for everything she had said. She bit her lip against the pain of him giving up on her (_Like you wanted,_ a little voice reminded her) and took a step away. But her anger with herself made her forget who Tony was: a fighter, who was braver and even more stubborn that her.

"That's crap, Ziva," he told her calmly. "All of it. And you _are_ the person I want you to be. Need you to be. You're better than you think you are."

"Stop thinking that," she implored. "Stop supporting me. Stop fighting."

Tony gave her a wry smile, and then took a seat on the side of her bed. He braced his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor as he gathered his thoughts, and Ziva took the time to prepare herself for yet another round of yelling and firing arrows of agony at each other. But when he lifted his head to look at her again, she knew that he was going to change his game plan on her.

"Okay. When I unloaded on you at the hospital, I should have been more measured with what I said," he began, negotiating with her like she was a difficult witness. She took half a step back as her mind raced over how to deal with him like this, but he continued. "I clearly lumped a load of guilt on you, and that's not what I was trying to do. I got carried away, and I'm sorry that I made you feel so badly."

Ziva didn't know how to deal with his tactical _mea culpa_. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"I don't want to fight," he told her, pleading his case with his eyes.

Ziva took another step back. "I did not either," she reminded him. "But now it is too late. I am going to have a shower and then go to sleep for eternity, so you can leave."

His hand lifted as if he was going to reach out to her, but he pulled it back in again. "I don't want to leave it like this, Ziva."

She held up her left hand to block him. "Well, I am done," she said with finality, and then turned and headed to the en suite before he could object further. She slammed the door behind her and threw the lock. When she eventually got under the shower spray, she cried like she hadn't cried in months.

…

When she emerged from the shower 20 minutes later (with 10 of those minutes spent on undressing and getting dressed again with only one arm cooperating), Tony was gone from her bedroom. She looked down the hallway as she passed in front of her bedroom door. Both Tony's and McGee's doors were closed. She could see a crack of light under McGee's and heard muffled noises so she supposed he had gotten home after taking Bonnie and Kavita to Tony's apartment. But there was darkness beneath Tony's door. She wondered if he had gone home to his apartment too, and the thought made her feel sick and sad with regret. But having him leave to possibly reevaluate her role in his life was what they both needed him to do. History told them that she would probably keep hurting him until the end of time, even though she didn't want to. He had to accept that if he wanted to stay, didn't he?

It would be so easy to accept that this was the way it was going to be, and that it was out of her control. But as she neared her bed to where he had been sitting and trying to reason with her, another voice in her head came through loud and clear. _No_, it said. _It is not out of your control. It is entirely _within_ your control._ Ziva stopped with her hand on the corner of the bedspread, and she felt like a bucket of water had been poured over her head as realization spread through her. All of this was entirely within her control. Although it was her natural inclination to try to shield him from things that could get him hurt, she could make herself accept that he knew how to handle himself. He wanted to feel needed, so she could make herself start going to him for help, even if she was worried about his safety or if she thought she could handle things alone. He wanted to be heard, so she could start taking his advice or at least start _talking_ his advice over with him. He wanted to be consulted when she made a decision, so she could…what?

Ziva frowned at the bed. Yes, he wanted to be consulted when she made a decision. But was she wrong to think that wasn't fair within the confines of their current relationship? He was her friend. He was her partner and co-worker. So was McGee, but she wouldn't think about talking to McGee about whether it was a good idea for her to, say, put off shoulder surgery until she was properly employed again. But Tony would expect to be consulted, like a boyfriend or a husband would be. And yet, he wasn't either of those things.

She swallowed the bitter taste from her mouth. So, maybe that was one thing on his list of demands that she couldn't accept yet. But it was up to her to accept and work on the rest if she wanted him to stay around. Which she did, of course. She wanted it wholeheartedly. It just went against what she thought might be good sense for him. But maybe that was one of those things she could talk about with him. She had given him all the facts as she saw them about being a close part of her life, and he'd certainly lived with the facts for years now. So maybe she now had to listen to and accept his views on the subject.

She dropped the bedspread again and headed out of her bedroom and down the hall. She suddenly felt the need for ice cream. Well, she actually wanted a stiff drink, but while she was under the influence of prescription painkillers, she understood that wasn't a good idea.

Ziva was halfway down the staircase before she heard voices and noticed flickering bluish light being cast over the wall by the stairs. She paused for a moment, but soon realized that the light was coming from the television in the otherwise darkened living room. She crept down the rest of the stairs and then stopped by the open double-doors to the lounge. Between her and the television was the couch, and on the couch sat Tony. Just the top half of the back of his head was visible as he reclined back against the cushions, but the sight of him still there in her house filled her with relief. Ziva glanced at the television again and frowned when she saw he was watching _The Sound of Music_. He hated that movie. _Hated_ it. She had tried to get him to watch it with her for years, purely for the entertainment factor of watching him squirm and fidget through it. But he had always firmly resisted.

She took a breath for courage before she walked around the side of the couch, just far enough to see the side of his face. He was frowning—practically glowering, actually—and his arms were tightly crossed over his chest. When the light from the TV screen flashed over his face, Ziva thought she saw drying tracks over his cheeks. Shame and guilt stabbed her in the heart, and she hesitated over whether to stay and try to apologize or at least explain herself, and leaving him alone. But before she decided what to do, he turned his head slowly and looked up at her. For a few seconds they both just stared at each other without expression, and then Tony turned back to the TV.

"You might not have heard it over our yelling," he said with a croaky voice. "But McGee's up there having really loud sex and it's making me uncomfortable to be in the room next to him."

Ziva blinked at him as she processed the information, and she didn't know whether it was the drugs, the relief that Tony was still there or the sheer absurdity of what her life had become that made her let go of the laugh that bubbled up in her chest. Tony didn't look at her, but she saw him crack a smile.

"I've heard things I can't un-hear," he complained to her. "It's not fair."

And just like that, when presented with Tony just being so damn…_Tony_ about things, Ziva loosened the death grip she'd held on her self-flagellation, frustration and fear. With a deep sigh she was able to settle back into her normal, almost-sane self who was never more comfortable with life than she was in Tony's company. She stepped over his legs that he had propped up on the coffee table and then curled up on the couch beside him. Unlike she normally did, she left a foot of space between them instead of leaning her shoulder against his.

"_The Sound of Music?_" she questioned.

"I hate this movie," he grumbled.

"Why are you watching it?"

He pursed his lips for a moment as he considered how to respond. "I want to see what you see."

Ziva looked over at the TV and tried to remember why she liked it so much. She couldn't anymore. "Then you will have to think like a seven-year-old girl."

Tony sighed and bent his arm back between the couch and his head. "I think that might be beyond my ken."

Ziva smiled slightly, and the two of them went silent while nuns sang about how much of a pain in the butt Maria was. Her eyes slid over to Tony, and as his face settled into an expression of disdain she found herself almost overwhelmed by intense feelings of love and affection for him. She might truly think that he would be better off without her screwing up his life, but God, she didn't think she had it within her to let him go. She was too selfish to be without him. And she knew that she was so incredibly lucky to be one of the people that he cared about. Even if she didn't always understand why he did.

"I know I am not alone," she said to him, going back to the crux of the issues he'd raised in the hospital. Tony turned his head to look at her, and when he looked like he was open to hearing more, she went on. Calmly. "I know you have my back like no one else ever will. But in doing that, I worry that I will always end up hurting you more and more. Because that is all I seem to do, despite it being the thing that I want to guard against the most."

"So you ignore me," he said, but his tone lacked accusation. He sounded like he was just trying to understand her.

She shook her head. "No, not ignore. Push away."

"That's not better, Ziva," he said wryly.

"I know." She didn't know what else to say to that, so she looked back to the safety of the television.

He cleared his throat. "Can I suggest that you just try _not_ hurting me?"

It sounded like such a simple fix. But Ziva couldn't help pointing out what she felt was the obvious. "But when you find something that you are so good at, it is hard to let it go." To her relief, he chuckled. She smirked, but then her thoughts turned painfully serious again. "The things you need me to do terrify me," she admitted. "They sound so reasonable and normal, but I am so scared of trying. Scared of _failing_," she amended.

Tony went silent then, and for so long that she thought her honesty must have hurt him again. She started to curse herself and tried to think of how to explain herself—again. But when he finally responded, Tony just sounded introspective.

"Right now, you and me have a lot more wiggle room and a lot less pressure on us than we're used to having. I think we need to start taking advantage of that."

Her eyes travelled from the TV to his feet on the coffee table, but she didn't dare go further than that for now. "What do you mean?"

"It means that the things you're talking about that you're terrified of, and the things that I'm terrified of, shouldn't be as terrifying right now." He paused, and she could feel him hesitate before pushing his thought out anyway. "We don't have anything to lose."

Her chest tightened as she realized what he was saying. They weren't living under Gibbs' rules right now. They were co-workers, but their own bosses. While she doubted that he was suggesting they dive head-first into a relationship right now, he was making the point that they didn't have Gibbs in their faces scrutinizing their every move, word, look and touch. They didn't have to explain themselves to anyone else. They didn't have to measure their affection for each other or pretend that they weren't hurt by each other's actions in the way that two people in a relationship would be. He was right about one thing: they had wiggle room. But he was so very, very wrong about another thing.

"I still have you to lose," she told him quietly as tears sprang to her eyes again. "And despite what you seem to think, and what I may have led you to believe, that would destroy me. Because I do need you, Tony."

Out of the corner of her eye she could see him watching her, and she steeled herself before lifting her eyes to his. The warmth in his expression, the aching familiarity and love from someone who knew all her flaws and was still, after everything, sitting beside her, absolutely broke her heart.

"You're never going to lose me," he told her brokenly. "Thick and thin and all that."

Before she came downstairs she had tried to accept that she needed him to decide whether to stay with her or not. It seemed that he had, and she couldn't believe that the chips had fallen in her favor when she'd spent so long trying to construct a wall to keep them away. She had a goddamn angel on her shoulder, and she knew without a doubt that she had to start putting all her effort into showing him that he had made the right decision to stand by her.

Even if she still wondered if she deserved his loyalty.

"Tony, I am scared that we will find that it is not healthy for us to hold onto each other, and that I will have to let you go," she told him. "I am scared that you will find out that I am really not the person you need." She wasn't just talking about their friendship and partnership. She was talking about who she would be in the relationship they had been dancing around for years. Tony knew it. And he threw in some fears of his own.

"I'm scared that you really don't need me for anything," he told her, repeating what he'd said by the stairs but with a new weight to his words that somehow crushed her even more than before. "And I'm scared that I'll wake up one day and you'll just be gone because you think that you're just not good enough or, I don't know, deserving enough."

The sight of tears welling in his eyes made hers spill over, and Ziva shook her head firmly as she found resolve she'd lacked just moments ago. "I need you," she told him, and leaned in to grip his arm tightly. "I _need_ you."

His brief smile was enough to tell her how badly he'd needed to hear that, and he reached over to wrap his arm carefully around her shoulders and tug her closer. She went willingly.

"You are who I need," he told her.

She turned herself carefully so that she could hug him with her good arm, and chuckled into his shoulder. "Just with a few edits," she said. "I do listen to you. But I will try to be more open and considerate of what you are saying."

"That'd be really great," he admitted.

On a whim, Ziva brushed a butterfly-soft kiss to his neck before pulling back from the hug. She stayed leaning against him, though, and Tony didn't move his arm from around her shoulders. It felt tentative on both of their parts, but Ziva resisted her flight response and stayed where she was. She had to get over herself and the roadblocks she continuously put between them while they had the chance to live without rules.

Tony turned his face a little way towards her, and she felt his breath on her cheek. "Can you please explain this thing for me?" he asked, gesturing at the movie on TV.

"Probably not," she said. "I think I mostly loved it because of the songs, and because I liked the idea of having so many brothers and sisters."

"So, it wasn't the creepy relationship between Maria and the angry, misogynist Captain that sucked you in?"

"No."

"Well, good. Because that had me worried."

She smiled, and they watched the movie again for a few more minutes in silence. The drugs might have been helping, but Ziva felt herself begin to relax again and be happy in the moment. When Tony groaned a little at the story, she looked up at him and again felt a wave of utter affection for him. Butterflies started fluttering in her stomach, but she knew it was okay to tell him what was on her mind.

"I need you," she told him again.

Tony pulled his eyes from the screen to look at her, and there was a light in his eyes that gave her gooseflesh. Still, he sounded just a little too shy when he responded. "Do me a favor and remind me every now and then, will you?"

Ziva nodded, and filed the information away. In the future, she would need to not just show him she needed him, but tell him. It was important to him. She rested her head against him, and after another few moments she felt her eyes begin to droop.

"I might fall asleep here," she told him.

"Me too."

"The painkillers might make me snore and drool on you."

Tony chuckled, and she felt him turn his face to press his mouth to her hair. "That's exactly how I like you."

* * *

**So, yes. Rough seas. But I hope you liked where the tide took you and felt it took you there naturally. Or something. FYI, I wrote this before the season eleven premiere. I still haven't watched those two episodes, but I'm told that there might be some crossover of themes between this and those, although obviously things turned out differently in canon. I guess this is just a reminder that this story goes AU from the end of season ten.  
My sincere thanks to everyone who got in touch after the last chapter to say their interest was not waning. I haven't been able to get back to you personally yet, but I will. I hope this chapter hasn't now turned you off after you proclaimed your support, but I was trying to get at the crux of the Tony/Ziva issues towards the end of season ten. As ever, your views may vary. We all view things slightly (or significantly) differently, and that's just fine. **


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Saturday, 19 December 2015_

After being grilled over her tardiness the day before, Ziva made sure she was in the office before any one else the next morning. She spent the first half hour of her alone time cleaning out her inbox and doing a few checks on leads that had come in overnight, but nothing looked like it would pan out. Dejected, she put the case aside for a moment and tried to cheer herself up by giving some real thought to Tony's Christmas present. She knew it had to be a vacation somewhere. He was exhausted, and although he'd brought up their trip to the Bahamas last year as a way of calming her down after her nightmare last night, she couldn't help but think he was trying to give himself a calming and motivating memory to hold on to as well. She flicked through a couple of websites for some ideas, and found herself warming to the sound of Italy in the summertime. He'd talked for years about taking a 'pilgrimage to the mother country', and Ziva hadn't been back there for more than ten years, aside from their very quick trip over to meet Stan Burley a few years back. A little self-guided tour along the coast for a few weeks sounded like what they both needed. She smiled to herself and bookmarked a few pages for further research.

With that semi-solid plan in place Ziva felt like she had accomplished something with the morning, and she started feeling her motivation return. She checked the clock—it was a little before 0730. The others would start arriving soon. But she probably had a little bit of time to pull up the information she, McGee and Tony had gathered on Eddie Hertzog back in 2013. She knew that Gibbs had told her to drop it, and that she couldn't properly articulate to Tony why she still thought Eddie was involved, but her gut was telling her to keep looking. McGee, being the records freak that he was, had kept everything they had found in neat electronic files, and had even added in the evidence the police had used at Eddie's trial and all the transcripts that had been available. The day after Bonnie died he had brought all the information in and transferred it to the NCIS servers as background information. Ziva thought that she knew most of the details in those files back to front, but perhaps there was something in there that she had forgotten over time. It wasn't that she was still fixated on Eddie, she reasoned with herself. It was just that knowing about your victim's life was important when you were trying to solve the mystery of her death.

She opened the summary file and scanned the details. Eddie Hertzog was an only child whose mother had died when he was a kid. He had been raised by his father and a revolving door of stepmothers and girlfriends in New York in the late 1980s. In 2013 he had been working as some kind of financial planner for a mid-level firm and bringing home almost six figures. He had several restraining orders taken out against him and received a warning for assaulting a waitress, but had managed to avoid ever being charged for his harassment and physical abuse of several girlfriends. He was highly intelligent, highly manipulative and a control freak who seemed to get away with whatever he wanted via a mix of good looks and charm. But the first time Ziva had seen him up close, when he had stood on her doorstep and warned her to keep out of his business with Bonnie, she had seen through those good looks to the coldness in his eyes.

Ziva closed the summary sheet and selected one of the two-dozen image files named with sequential numbers. A large, close-up photo of a woman's bruised neck filled her computer screen, and it took Ziva a few seconds of staring before she realized the woman was _her_. She sucked in a sharp breath and felt her stomach drop. These were the photos taken after Eddie had attacked her. She opened them one-by-one. There was her neck, her bloodied knuckles, her fingernails stained with Eddie's blood, the torn and bruised skin over the side of her face that had bled so much. Most of the photos were taken by the Metro P.D. detectives who had taken up the case and worked with her, Tony and McGee to bring charges against Eddie for what he'd done to Bonnie (and Ziva). But some had been taken by Tony with his phone in the ER. She remembered the look on his face as he did it, like he could barely stand making her a 'crime scene', like he hated that he had to intrude on her vulnerable moment and record it for history, and like he was going to go out and find Eddie that night and beat the daylights out of him. He hadn't, of course. He had stayed right by her side in the ER, and then hadn't left her all night once they'd gotten home. That night, with her good sense dulled by painkillers, she had almost told him that she didn't just need him, but loved him.

"Morning."

Ziva jumped at being caught investigating what she shouldn't and quickly clicked the button that minimized all the open windows on her computer screen. She looked around as Quinn came around the side of the partition beside her desk, and she gave him a pleasant, innocent smile.

"Good morning," she returned.

Quinn dropped his bag beside his desk before taking a step towards hers. He gestured at her computer. "Were those photos of Bonnie?"

"Uh, no," Ziva replied. "Just an old case. It is nothing."

Quinn nodded easily, and Ziva relaxed a bit when it became clear that he really wasn't interested. His mind was elsewhere. "Listen," he began in a conciliatory tone. "I'm really sorry about yesterday when we went to interview D'Augustino. I didn't mean to touch a nerve. I was just trying to be honest with you."

Ziva rested her elbows on her desk and leaned forward. As she sighed, she let go of her somewhat unwarranted irritation with her partner.

"I didn't mean to imply that I don't think you can do your job," Quinn went on sincerely. "I'm just aware that the case is a rough one for you. And I know what it's like to have a rough case, so I wanted to reach out. We're partners, Ziva." He paused to give her a self-aware chuckle. "I know I'll never be Tony. I probably won't even be McGee to you, at least for another ten years. But we're still partners, and I want you to be okay."

Ziva stood up behind her desk to put them on equal footing. "I know," she told him. "And I am sorry for being so quick to snap at you yesterday. You are right. This is a difficult case for me. But I should not take that out on you. And you should never be anything but honest with me."

"Except about how bad your driving is," Quinn muttered, but then gave her a teasing smirk.

Ziva rolled her eyes. Sometimes it really did feel like Tony was still around in this team. She ignored the comment. "I promise I am trying to find some perspective in this case," she told him, half meaning it.

Quinn nodded, and the tension between them relaxed considerably. "Good." He walked behind his desk to sit down, and then turned back into his normal happy and easy-going self. "So, you make any more headway on Tony's Christmas present?"

Ziva sat, and felt great relief at the easier turn in the conversation. "Yes. I think I will take him to Italy in the summer."

Quinn's eyebrows rose quickly. "Wow. That's better than a new sweater, huh?" He gave her a teasing smirk. "You going to elope or something?"

And just like that, the conversation turned again. Ziva stared at him as a funny, heavy feeling settled in her chest and her mouth went dry. She hadn't been thinking about eloping at all, but having Quinn sit in Tony's chair and ask her about that brought a strong memory back to her. Sitting here, late at night in the half-dark with Tony, right before…some major event. Was it the bombing? Ziva wasn't sure. But they had talked about all the things they hated about weddings, and had quietly agreed that eloping would be so much easier. The two of them weren't together back then. They were still years away from a relationship, but she remembered so clearly that at the time she had felt sure that they were on the brink of taking the step. She remembered so clearly the way he had looked at her that night, the way he had smiled and made her stomach flip and cheeks burn. She remembered how stupidly giddy she had felt for a few moments before the real world had encroached on their quiet, private space and they'd gotten on with whatever case they had been working. She remembered she loved him even then.

God, when she got home tonight she was going to kiss the man senseless.

"They're not allowed to elope," Gibbs said as he arrived for the day. He gave Ziva a quick wink as he passed her desk on the way to hers.

"How come?" Quinn asked. "Is that against the Marine code? Or a Gibbs rule?"

"Nope. It's against the family code," Gibbs said plainly as he took his seat. He looked over at Ziva. "Ten years of trouble, David. Don't cut me out of this now."

Ziva opened her mouth but closed it again when no sound came out. She didn't know what to say. She hadn't been talking about eloping in the first place. Quinn had. She had no idea if she would ever actually do it, but she had to admit that the look on Gibbs' face right now—fatherly affection and hope—made her think twice. It would kill her not to have him there. It would kill _Tony_ not to have him there.

"We are not eloping," she managed to say.

Gibbs nodded to himself. "Good."

"Morning!" McGee called as he joined the team. "Who's eloping?"

"No one," Ziva said, and then looked up at Greg from the mailroom as he arrived with his mail cart.

"Morning, Agent David," Greg said, and placed a letter on her desk.

She gave him a distracted smile and muttered a "thank you" as Quinn eagerly filled McGee in.

"Ziva's taking Tony on a trip as his Christmas present, and I think she's doing it so they can elope."

McGee looked at Ziva, askance. "Really?" he asked. He didn't sound convinced.

"No," she said firmly.

Greg passed between them to hand out more mail, and McGee had to lean to the side to keep looking at her. "What trip?" he asked.

"It is a secret," she said.

McGee looked at Quinn. "What trip?"

"It's a secret," Quinn repeated, and then winked at Ziva. "For now."

"Are you making it official?" McGee asked her.

Ziva shook her head and held her hands out to bring him to a halt. "Nothing has changed since yesterday. Or the day before. Or the day before."

"You've been engaged for a week already?" Quinn joked.

Ziva sighed heavily at him, and then tuned him and McGee out as she reached for the letter Greg had left for her. She loved Tony with all her heart, and she did intend to marry him. Of course she had thought about it in a broader context in the past. But was everyone else thinking about it as well? She turned the letter over slowly in her hands as she let herself think for a moment about what her life would be like if she and Tony actually went through with it now rather than later. Would she feel different? Some married people said that marriage made them feel different, but others said it didn't. Ziva couldn't guess which way she would go. She didn't even know if she wanted to feel different. She felt just fine now. She felt secure in their relationship, and she wasn't worried that dragging this stage of it out a little longer would make them worse off in the long run. She knew he was keen to have a baby soon-ish, but they didn't need to be married for that. And yet, there was a flutter in her heart that she couldn't deny when she thought of making the change. A flutter that told her that maybe it was time to do it.

"Would you do it in a church?"

Ziva looked up as Quinn's question penetrated her thoughts. "Hmm?"

Quinn grinned as he looked between Gibbs and McGee, and with a quick glance around Ziva realized that all three of them were looking at her. "If you're not going to elope, would you get married in a church?" Quinn repeated. "Or a synagogue or a park or Gibbs' basement…?"

Ziva blinked at him and felt her cheeks flush. While she had been lost in her thoughts, she hadn't realized that they were still talking about her. She sighed with exasperation. "Quinn!"

"I don't think you're allowed to use churches or synagogues for multi-denominational weddings," McGee said thoughtfully. "Me and Delilah have made some initial enquiries at some churches around, and we've been told that we're both going to have to prove we've been baptized before a church will accept our booking." He looked at Ziva. "You'll have to get a celebrant to do it instead of a priest or a rabbi."

"You should ask Abby to get herself ordained and get her to do it," Quinn said, before another thought occurred to him. "Wait, can women get ordained? By those online places, I mean."

"I think so," McGee said, then turned to his computer and started typing. "I'll check."

Ziva felt her eyes widen and her heart pounded as she lost control of the situation. "Stop it!" she told McGee, and then aimed a warning glare at Quinn. "Mind your own business!"

Quinn and McGee both grinned at her distress.

"We're helping!" Quinn insisted.

Ziva pointed at him with the envelope she had mangled without realizing it. "You are definitely not helping," she told him. "And if you keep trying, you will not be invited." She swung the envelope in an arc to point at McGee. "Nor will you."

McGee took his eyes off his computer screen to give her a fleeting, mournful look, and then Abby came running in like her pants were on fire. Ziva felt a moment of panic that McGee had already emailed Abby with the idea that she should preside over a wedding that wasn't even happening (yet), but Abby came to a stop at Gibbs' desk and slammed a piece of paper down on it so hard that all of them, Gibbs included, jumped in their seats.

"I got it I got it I got it!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "It took me all night and all yesterday and a bit of the night before, but I finally got the little toad!"

Gibbs blinked slowly at his disheveled forensic scientist before looking down at the paper. "What toad, Abs?"

"The toad who made the call to Bonnie," Abby said.

The news drove Ziva, McGee and Quinn out of their chairs to cluster around Gibbs' desk. Abby leaned over to grab the clicker and hit the buttons until a mug shot of a large, muscular but somehow peaceful-looking man with a brown beard came up on the plasma.

"Charles Fields," Abby announced. "I was finally able to track him from the payphone to a diner about five blocks away using traffic cameras. There was only one good shot of his face but it took me, like, a bazillion years and a dozen attempts to clean up the footage enough to actually see his face and get a shot I could put into our facial recognition software. I finally got a hit."

The agents scattered back to their desks to do searches on the suspect in preparation to answer the questions they knew Gibbs would start firing at them.

"What was he arrested for?" Gibbs asked.

"Assault and battery," McGee replied. "He's also got previous convictions for theft, break and enter, assault, assault, disorderly conduct, disorderly conduct, theft…Yeah. His rap sheet goes on like this for a while."

"Career criminal in and out of state and federal prisons for the last 15 years," Quinn added. "Has only been out on parole from his last stint in federal prison for a couple of weeks."

"Next of kin is his mother, Vanessa. She lives in Alaska," Ziva said, reading from the database on her screen. "No other family."

"But he's supposed to be living with a woman named Lori Baker in Fairfax since being released," Quinn went on.

"Employment?" Gibbs asked.

Ziva shook her head. "Nothing since he was released," she told him. "Nothing official, that is."

"Has he got a cell phone?" Gibbs asked Abby. "So you and McGee can do that…" he waved his hand around vaguely, "…ping thing?"

"Off cell phone towers," McGee said, picking up the thought. "So we can prove he was in the area of the pay phone when the call was made."

Gibbs nodded and waved at him to get cracking on the 'ping thing'. But after a few seconds of checking, McGee literally pouted at his computer screen.

"He doesn't have a cell, boss."

"Who the hell doesn't have a cell?" Quinn said, incredulous. "What is this, 1999?"

"Someone who got out of prison three weeks ago," Abby suggested.

Gibbs came around to the front of his desk. "Okay. Ziva, Quinn, work on getting a warrant to search his residence. McGee, with me. Let's go see if Mr. Fields is willing to talk to us."

"On it," Ziva said.

"I'll give his parole officer a call," Quinn added.

"Which prison was he in?" Ziva asked as Gibbs and McGee walked between them on the way to the elevator.

Quinn checked the record her was looking at. "Uh…looks like it was Greenvale."

It took Ziva a moment, but then the information clicked in her head and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

"Wait, Greenvale?" McGee asked, sounding alarmed.

Ziva looked up at him, and saw the alarm she felt reflected in his face.

"What?" Gibbs barked.

Ziva held McGee's gaze, and gave him a subtle, imploring look. She was already walking a thin line with Gibbs. If she let him in on the significance of Greenvale, he would immediately disregard the information. But he needed to know.

McGee turned to look at Gibbs. "Greenvale was where Eddie Hertzog was sent for stalking Bonnie Stewart."

Ziva's eyes were fixed on Gibbs as he drew in the information with a deep breath and rocked back slightly on his heels. He glanced in Ziva's direction, but his eyes fell on Quinn.

"OK. Get in touch with the prison," Gibbs told him. "I want to know if Hertzog and Fields crossed paths."

"You got it," Quinn said.

Gibbs cocked his head at McGee and then headed off to the elevator. Before he followed, McGee shot Ziva a look of solidarity. She nodded and gave him a small smile of thanks.

Perhaps her gut feeling about Eddie's involvement in Bonnie's death had been right after all.

* * *

_Wednesday, 3 July 2013_

It didn't look like his duffel bag could take even another sock, let alone a t-shirt. But Tony forced the crew neck into a tiny space that hadn't existed until a moment ago, and then pulled and cinched and wrestled with the zipper until finally (and with very sore fingers) he got it three-quarters of the way closed. It would have to do, he decided. The bag was only going as far as the car, anyway. It wasn't like he was taking it onto the Metro. With that done, he took a moment to stand back and look between his open closet and open dresser. Both were significantly emptier than they had been at the start of the summer. Several suits still hung in his closet, but that was only because he didn't really need them now. He'd been living in jeans, shirts and t-shirts since quitting NCIS, and most of those had migrated to his closet at Ziva's house. That's where this latest batch of clothes were headed as well. He supposed he could try washing the dirty clothes that were already over there, but he hadn't been in a laundry mood. Asking McGee or Ziva to do it for him would be met with scorn, accusations of being lazy and/or pathetic, and possibly a sharp kitchen utensil being thrown at his head. So either he did laundry or brought over more clothes. The later seemed easier.

He went to close his closet door, but swung it open quickly again when he remembered his birthday present from Ziva. They were supposed to go out on the weekend for the _Fantasia_ orchestra thing. He wasn't sure whether he was supposed to dress up for it, but grabbing a suit now would save him from having to make a trip back to his apartment tomorrow. He flipped through the suit selection in front of him and, after a moment of back-and-forth indecision between a stylish dark blue and an equally stylish light grey, he grabbed the blue. It was more versatile to the situation and had a slightly better fit.

He slung the suit on its hangar over his shoulder, closed the closet with his foot and grabbed his duffel bag before going out to the living room. Bonnie and Kavita looked up at him from the couch, wearing almost the exact same pleasant, grateful and slightly awkward smile.

"You get everything?" Bonnie asked, making awkward small talk.

Tony nodded. "All set. Have you been able to find everything you need?" McGee had moved the women to Tony's apartment while he was with Ziva in the ER. For Tony, it felt kind of weird to have two relative strangers in his place when it had been his private sanctuary for so long. But he was barely using the apartment these days, most of his valuable possessions that could be broken or were worthy of being stolen had migrated to Ziva's, and Bonnie and Kavita needed a place to stay. So he was making the effort to get over the strange, vulnerable feeling their unsupervised attendance in his house gave him.

"Yes, thanks," Bonnie answered him. "I hope you don't mind that we're filling your trash with take out containers."

"I'm kind of scared of using your kitchen," Kavita chimed in. "It's so…clean."

Tony shrugged. "That's because I don't use it. I get take out." He hefted his duffel bag over his shoulder. "Give me a call if you need anything. One of us will come by to check on you tomorrow."

Bonnie got off the couch and approached him, crossing her arms. "Have you got anything more on Eddie yet?"

Tony nixed the idea of telling her about Ziva's ill-fated trip to his apartment. "We're close," he partially lied to her. "It should only be another few days." And he meant it. If this went on for much longer then the team would definitely resort to less legal methods of trapping Eddie. Ziva was clearly already out of patience, and he and McGee weren't far behind. "If he contacts you, let us know."

Bonnie nodded and walked him to the door. "Yeah, don't worry. I'm not going to keep that to myself."

Tony paused with the front door open and met her worried eyes. "Bonnie," he said, using the voice he knew worked to reassure people. Especially women. "I know it's taking time. But we'll get him. And you'll be safe."

Bonnie watched him for a few hesitant moments before she drew a calming breath and nodded. "I know," she said, and she seemed to believe it. "Thank you."

With his guests safe and sound, Tony left Bonnie and Kavita in his apartment and headed downstairs and onto the street. Dusk had fallen in the time he'd been inside, and he figured it would be dark by the time he got back to the house. He hoped that meant Ziva or McGee had made dinner.

Speak of the devil, McGee called as he walked down the sidewalk towards the car. "DiNozzo," he answered automatically.

"Hey, where are you?" McGee asked.

"Just leaving my place," Tony told him. "The cats are in the cradle."

There was a pause. "You got a cat?"

Tony rolled his eyes to himself as his covert message went over McGee's head. "Damn it, McGee."

"What are you talking about?" McGee asked, making it sound like Tony was the crazy one.

"My _houseguests_ are fine," Tony told him, trying to make it a bit more obvious.

It took McGee a moment, but then Tony heard a long "_Ohhhhhh_" of understanding over the line. "Got it," he assured Tony. "Good. Okay. So, did you or Ziva have plans tonight?"

Tony made a face at McGee not making sense this time. He pulled his keys out of his pocket. "Why? Do you want to go on a date?"

"Actually, yeah. If you guys aren't planning anything."

Tony hit the button to unlock Ziva's car, and opened the back door. He threw his duffel bag into the foot well. "Just to be clear," he said to McGee, "which one of us are you hoping to date?"

"Tony!" McGee said with exasperation. "I want to go out with _Delilah_ unless you or Ziva had plans for the three of us to do something on the case."

"_Ohhhhhh,_" Tony returned as he caught on. He laid his suit carefully over the back seat and slammed the door. He really wanted to wrap this case up, especially after seeing the worry in Bonnie's eyes. But she was safe for tonight, and Tony really didn't want to rob McGee of the opportunities they'd all passed up or denied over the last decade or so. "No, go out. Have fun. But be home by early morning, because we've got to kill this thing."

"Sure."

Tony walked around to the driver's door and got in. "You sure you're not settling in to this relationship too fast?" he teased.

"I want to spend time with her," McGee defended. "Like you want to spend time with Ziva."

Tony ignored the deeper meaning to that, and replied without thinking. "Because you're worried that Delilah will end up in hospital if she's left alone for half an hour?"

McGee went to Ziva's defense. "Go easy on her, Tony."

A flash of frustration made Tony jam the key into the ignition with a little more force than necessary. He didn't turn the car on yet, though. He wanted to argue McGee's point, and he couldn't do two things at once. "You don't think I go easy on her?" he asked, incredulous. "I am _the easiest_ on her. I am _always_ letting things go to keep the peace. Things I shouldn't let go." He paused as a thought occurred to him. "Is this about last night? Did she tell you about last night?" He thought they'd worked through that, and that the fight was over. He thought they'd reached an understanding. But was Ziva was complaining to McGee about it?

It didn't appear so. "What happened last night?" McGee asked, sounding genuinely clueless. "Aside from her falling off a wall? By the way, do you think she was being honest about that?"

"Yes," Tony replied without even having to think about it. He knew when Ziva was lying as sure as he knew when _he_ was lying. Yesterday, she had told the truth. "So she didn't tell you about the fight we had?"

"No," McGee said on a sigh. "You had another fight?" He sounded as tired of it as Tony and Ziva were.

"We sorted it out," Tony assured him.

"Sorted it out, how?" McGee asked. "With your usual _let's just forget about it_ method? Or did you actually talk about the issue and find a solution?"

Tony supposed that the tone in McGee's voice was akin to one a mother would use, and he didn't appreciate it. "Yes, we actually talked it out," he replied testily.

"Well, good," McGee said. "You two need to keep doing that in the future. You know, if you're going to have a shot."

Tony turned the key and the car engine roared to life. "A shot at what?" he asked, and reached back for his seatbelt.

"Well…being together," McGee said simply.

Tony froze, just as his seatbelt clicked into place. "Being…?" he started, and despite his wish for a change to their relationship, eight years of conditioning sent him automatically into _panic and deny_ mode. "We're not—"

"OH MY _GOD!_" McGee suddenly cut in, yelling with frustration. "Are you _kidding me_?"

Tony jumped at the sudden noise and held the phone away from his ear. "Why are you yelling at me?" he yelled.

"Are you seriously going to keep up this stupid charade of not being in love with each other?" McGee demanded to know. "_Seriously?_ Because if you are, I am done with both of you! I swear to God. I've had to put up with this for _eight years _already, and I can't stand any more of it! Do you have any idea what it's like being the third wheel all the time when the other two people refuse to acknowledge that they're the primary wheels? _You don't know suffering!_ And I'm fed up with it!"

Tony stared straight ahead at the par parked in front of him as shock sank into his body and stole his strength. McGee never yelled like that. Never. And Tony didn't know how to respond. Not just because they were in unchartered Probie Hulk waters, but because he didn't know what he and Ziva were doing, and he didn't know how to reply.

For a few moments the only sound in Tony's ear was the humming of the car engine. It dragged out for as long as he could stand until finally he said, "Um…"

"You can't tell me you haven't looked at this great opportunity in front of you right now," McGee said, much calmer now that he'd gotten the yelling out of his system. "That you haven't looked at this world without Gibbs' rules, and thought that if you were ever going to make a move, now is the time to do it."

An unexpected lump formed in Tony's throat. He thought about denying it more—like he'd trained himself to do for the last few years—but in the end, he couldn't see the point. "Yes," he said thickly. "But there's stuff to work through." They had talked things out last night and found some kind of resolution. Or at least some common ground. And Tony did love her—straightforwardly. But Ziva's reluctance to rely on him when it really mattered still weighed heavily on his heart, and he needed to find a way past that.

"Of course there is," McGee said with understanding. "But don't wait until you think everything is perfectly aligned. Because it never will be. That's not how relationships work. They're not neat. They're messy, all the time."

It was solid advice, and Tony took it to heart. But he wouldn't be himself if he didn't take a little dig. "You've had a girlfriend for a few months and suddenly you're Dr Phil?"

"No need to be a douche about it," McGee muttered.

"I'm just joking," Tony said quickly.

"I know," McGee said. "But still."

"Sorry," Tony told him. "Thanks, Tim."

"So, I'll see you in the morning?" McGee checked.

"Yeah. I'll tell Ziva. Have a good night." He hung up and then plugged his phone into the car with the intent of listening to some calming jazz on his way back to Ziva's. But he paused. There was still stuff to work out with Ziva. But McGee was right. There was probably always going to be stuff to work out. Nothing was ever going to be perfect. But with a little bit more work now, things had the potential to get as close to perfect as they ever would. He was already being far more honest with her about how he felt than ever before. Ziva was being honest too, if not for one or two indiscretions. Time would tell whether or not she would start relying on him or including him more when it came to the things that really mattered. They both had adjustments to make on that issue. But he had a choice now. He could sit back and wait for something to happen that would prove her promises were ironclad. Or he could give them both the benefit of the doubt, give them both a break from the expectation of perfection and just treat her like his best friend, partner, confidant and object of deep affection.

Tony chose the latter.

He checked his cell phone was paired with the car (man, he _really_ liked the toys in this car) and hit the button on the steering wheel for voice activation. "Call Ziva," he instructed, and weaved his way out and into traffic as the phone started ringing over the car's speakers. Ziva answered almost immediately.

"David."

"Hey, it's me."

"Is Bonnie all right?" she asked quickly.

"Huh? Yeah, she's fine," Tony assured her.

Ziva sounded relieved. "Good. Are you coming home? I mean, here," she quickly corrected. "Here to my home."

"I'm on my way," he told her. "But it occurred to me while I was checking out my closet that I don't know what to wear to this thing on Saturday." He tried to inject his tone with just enough vapid sorority girl breathlessness to cover his nerves about the night.

"The _Fantasia_ thing?" Ziva checked.

"Unless you had another thing planned for me," he replied, playing up his hope.

It was rewarded. "I was going to buy you dinner," she told him.

"Oh, really?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "Well, that adds another challenge to my wardrobe selection."

There was a pause, and he imagined that Ziva was trying to work out whether he was being serious, or whether he was just amusing himself. "I suggest that you wear whatever you want to wear," Ziva replied haltingly.

Tony sighed briefly to himself as he pulled up at a red light. "So…sweat pants would be appropriate?"

"You never wear sweat pants out of the house," Ziva pointed out. "You do not even like to wear them when you are working out."

He frowned to himself. Sometimes he felt that they knew too much about each other. "Okay, not sweat pants," he allowed. "I'm just trying to work out if this is a high falutin' kind of hootenanny, or a low-key shindig."

"I do not think I speak whatever language it is that you are speaking now."

He chuckled as the light turned green, and then turned right towards Ziva's neighborhood. "Suit, tie and jacket? Suit but no tie? Jeans?"

"Are you honestly worried about this?" Ziva asked. She sounded like she couldn't believe that he was asking for so much detail, and Tony started feeling a little embarrassed for pushing it. But he wasn't interested in her answer as much as he was interested in just talking to her. He liked talking to her. So, sue him.

"No," he told her. "I'm just in traffic and I'm bored, so I thought I'd get you to entertain me."

"And you are asking me about _your_ clothes instead of requesting a detailed description of what I am wearing?"

One of Tony's eyebrows arched. She had a point. "Like…now? Or what you're planning on wearing on Saturday?"

"Either. It seems strange for you."

He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as he thought about that. "Saturday should be a surprise," he told her, forgetting for a moment that she hadn't actually said anything about it being a date, even if he was thinking of it that way. "But what are you wearing now? Can I guess?"

He heard her chuckle. "I will give you a hint: there is a sling involved."

Tony smiled briefly to himself, but he felt his stomach fall just a bit at the reminder of yesterday's crap storm. He tried to joke it off, though. "Hot." The car in front of him slowed prematurely to turn right, so Tony quickly checked over his shoulder before changing into the left lane. "It's not black lace, is it?"

"That would not be practical," Ziva pointed out sensibly. "And black lace does not go with the leggings I am wearing."

She said it casually, but it grabbed Tony's attention. Ziva in leggings was a rare but blessed sight. Whenever he saw her in them he had to wonder if she had any idea just how good she looked in them, and whether she wore them just to torture him in the sweetest way. Rationally, he knew she probably didn't. But that didn't detract from his voyeuristic enjoyment of it.

"You been running?" he asked, succeeding in sounding like he didn't even care that the world's most outstanding ass was currently encased in nothing but Lycra and waiting at the end of his trip to her place. Then, his mind went in an entirely different direction. "Hang on, didn't the doctor say you should avoid running for a while?"

"Yes, he did," Ziva replied with just enough edge to her voice to tell him to back off. "I have not been running. I did some simple, gentle stretching. That is all."

Great. Now he had the image in his head of Ziva in Lycra leggings doing stretches. He felt a stirring in his pants, and so tried to think of something else. "Well, good," he mumbled. "Hey, um, McGee's going to be out tonight with Delilah because the two of them are becoming codependent, but he said he'd be back early tomorrow so we can work out how we're going to wrap this case up."

"All right," Ziva said, sounding a little confused by the quick change in conversation. "Have you eaten? I started preparing some chicken for all three of us."

Leggings and dinner. Sometimes Tony felt like she was subtly asking him to marry her. "I'm ready to eat," he assured her, nodding at the car in front of him for emphasis she couldn't see. "You need anything from the store?"

"No, I have everything."

Tony heard her reply, but he didn't really register what she said. Because at that moment his brain was busy registering what he was seeing in front of him. The car he'd pulled in behind was a familiar-looking dark blue Ford Fusion with a license plate that Tony had seen a dozen times in the last week. Through the back window, he could see the outline of the driver, a man with a familiar profile and haircut. And that man was leading him into Ziva's neighborhood.

"Tony? Are you still there?" Ziva asked.

Tony licked his suddenly dry lips. "Hey, Ziva? I'm driving behind Eddie Hertzog."

"Where?" Ziva asked. He recognized the shift in her voice to her professional tone, as she had probably heard the change in his.

"We're on Morehead and 98th," he told her. "Close to you."

"How long have you been following him?"

"I just realized," he admitted. "Maybe three blocks." He let off the accelerator a little to put a touch more space between the two cars. He doubted that Eddie could make out who was following him with Tony's headlights on—a quick glance in his own rear-view mirror confirmed Tony couldn't make out anything of the driver behind him—but he wanted to avoid making Eddie feel like he was being tailed. Because he would be, now. Eddie took a left and Tony's stomach tightened in response. He was heading in the direction of Ziva's house. It didn't mean that was where he was going, Tony told himself. But his gut said otherwise. "Now we're on Sussex."

Clearly, Ziva was thinking along the same lines as him. "Why would he be coming here?"

"He probably saw both of us on the footage from Bonnie's apartment," Tony said. "Did you see a camera in his courtyard?"

"No, I checked," Ziva said. He heard her moving quickly, followed by the distinctive click of her racking her gun as she checked the chamber. "How far away are you? Five minutes?"

"Less."

"Is there anyone else in the car?"

"No, he's alone." Tony watched as Eddie took a right, but instead of following him along the arterial streets to Ziva's house, he sped ahead down Sussex. "I'm going to take a shortcut and try to get there before him."

"Do not drive recklessly," Ziva told him firmly, and without a hint of self-awareness. "I can take care of him. Until you get here," she added hastily.

He figured she was probably thinking about their fight the night before, where he'd swallowed significant pride to tell her she made him feel useless. She'd assured him several times that she did indeed need him, and it sounded like she was making the effort to show him now. He appreciated it—sincerely, he did—but when his partner was potentially in trouble, he wasn't going to come to a complete stop at stop signs.

"I'll be right there," he told her, then hung up and accelerated.

He made pretty good time right up until he got to the narrow cross street that ran perpendicular to Ziva's. Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars, and taking up the middle of the street was a shuttle bus unloading three elderly passengers (one with a walker), two adults and three kids. There was no way of passing them, and so Tony was forced to sit and wait as all their luggage (he reckoned it was at least two bags per person) were unloaded. He groaned aloud to himself and thumped on the steering wheel, and then laid on the horn sooner than he should have. The shuttle driver made a 'shut up' gesture as one of the women paid him. She shot Tony a filthy look as he laid on the horn again.

"Come on!" Tony yelled in frustration. "Move it!"

The shuttle driver returned to the shuttle, and after yet another blare of the horn from Tony he took off down the street. Tony didn't feel much relief, though. He was stuck behind the shuttle until it turned left a hundred yards down the street, and then he hit the accelerator. His heart was pounding wildly as he made it to Ziva's block. He caught sight of Eddie walking down the sidewalk a couple of houses up from Ziva's and swore under his breath. There was no parking spot free along her street (there rarely ever was at this time of night), and he considered doing what the shuttle had done and double-parking by her door.

But then, he had a moment of not-quite-brilliance.

All this time they had been struggling with how they were going to prove that Eddie was stalking Bonnie. They had circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. If Eddie was going to see Ziva, though, he obviously had something to say. And if Tony knew Ziva, he knew she would take a pretty good shot at getting him to admit his involvement. Simply getting Ziva's account of any admission would end up being a he said/she said deal. But if the conversation was recorded, that was something else all together.

So, when he came to Ziva's house, Tony kept rolling by the next three houses instead of stopping. He pulled up in a space around the block and then jogged down to the wall on the side of the house at the end of Ziva's row. The wall was double brick and about five feet tall. The yard beyond the wall was dark. It wasn't lost on him that he was about to do exactly what Ziva had been doing when she'd injured herself at Eddie's, but he figured that just meant that she wouldn't be able to yell at him if he hurt himself too.

He looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and then hoisted himself up, scrambled up to the top of the wall, and pushed himself off to land in a complete stranger's back yard. He felt a twinge in his ankle when he landed, but it went away after a few ginger steps. He started creeping across the paved area, staying low as possible, until he got to the opposite wall. One house down, two more to go.

When he landed in the second yard, he heard a dog bark and froze on the spot. He waited in the flower bed for what sounded like a very large and angry beast to come running full speed at him and attach its teeth to his jugular, but then worked out that the dog was probably the Labrador that a couple living in the row of houses backing onto this one owned. He let out his breath before his lungs exploded, and crept forward again to the next wall. Hoisting himself up this time was a little more difficult. He hadn't done an obstacle course like this for some time, and he was getting a bit breathless. But he made it, and swung himself into the Ziva's neighbor's yard.

This time, he landed on something hard that cracked and gave way, and sent him to his hands and knees. He quickly pushed himself up and scrambled over to the wall separating this yard from Ziva's, and put his back against it as he crouched low. Heat blossomed in his cheeks and he was puffing harder than he would have liked, but he waited in position and kept his eye on the back door of the house in case anyone heard the smash and came to investigate. After a count of ten he figured he was okay, so he stood up, took a deep breath and let it out, and then pushed himself up and over the wall into Ziva's yard.

Tony felt a pang in his chest that was either discomfort from the unexpected exercise or relief that he'd made it. Either way, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and jogged to the full glass back door. The kitchen beyond was dimly lit. There was a little light coming from the dining room door and also the hallway. He couldn't see Ziva or Eddie. Quickly, he let himself into the house and then crept through the kitchen to the dining room. He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and peeked out down the hallway to the front door. Ziva stood before the open door, her right arm still in a sling but her left pointed at an angle as her hand rested on her hip. Her gun was tucked into the waistband of her leggings behind her back. Eddie stood on the doorstep in front of her, wearing a smarmy smile that made Tony's lip curl. He could hear them arguing, and since Ziva didn't seem to be in any trouble at that moment, Tony lifted his phone and started filming them.

"I don't know what you think is going on. I can only guess at the twisted and misguided thoughts in your head," Eddie told Ziva. "But I'm telling you to stay away from her."

"I did not think that you listened to such threats," Ziva replied calmly. "Bonnie has told you many times to stay away from her, but you have ignored her. It is hypocritical of you to expect others to do the things that you refuse to do."

Eddie took half a step forward and leaned in. "Listen, kitten," he said with an edge. "You don't know shit about me and Bonnie. So keep your pretty little nose out of it."

"I know that you recorded videos of Bonnie in her own house and without her knowledge or consent," Ziva said, letting some fire creep into her voice. "And that you sent her stills from the videos to rattle her."

"Got some great shots of you and your boyfriend as well," Eddie told her. "You had a good look around, didn't you?"

Ziva didn't miss a beat. "So you are admitting that you placed cameras in Bonnie's house without her permission?"

Eddie leaned back again, and Tony felt a little moment of victory as realization ghosted across Eddie's face. He recovered quickly, though. "Calm yourself, kitten. I'm not admitting to anything."

"How do you know anything about me and my boyfriend if you are not stalking Bonnie?" Ziva asked.

"Bonnie told me. She tells me everything."

Ziva snorted. "Yes, it certainly must feel like that if you have her apartment under surveillance."

Eddie stared at her in anger for a few moments before collecting himself and sliding into a charming smile that made Tony's stomach turn. He pointed at Ziva's arm. "I sincerely hope that your injuries from yesterday aren't too bad, kitten," he said. "And that you heal quickly, before anything else should happen to you."

The comment sounded like a threat to Tony, and he quickly pushed himself off the wall and walked down the hallway to the front door. Eddie seemed surprised to see him and took another half a step backwards. Still recording with his phone (the video would be useless, but the audio would still work), Tony slung his arm casually around Ziva's shoulders and kissed her cheek.

"Who's at the door, honey?" he asked.

"It is the man who is stalking our client," Ziva replied, not taking her eyes off Eddie. "And he has just admitted to doing so."

"Well, that was a silly thing for him to do," Tony said. "But it makes our job easier."

"I thought so."

Eddie looked between them, but his cool demeanor stayed intact. "You don't have anything," Eddie told them, but then turned and walked down the three steps to the short path leading out of Ziva's tiny front yard. At the base of the steps he turned to look up at them again. "Heed the warning," he said, "and stay out of Bonnie's life."

It wasn't a warning, but a threat. And Tony didn't like it. He let go of Ziva and walked out the door to advance on Eddie. "Here's our warning," he told Eddie. "If you don't stop making threats against Bonnie, if you keep stalking her, and if you don't stay away from my partner, I will make sure that you go to jail for a long time."

Eddie backed up to the front gate and gave Tony a look of derision. "I'm shaking."

Tony kept coming at him. "Don't test me," Tony warned. "Get out of here."

Eddie paused on the sidewalk to look up at Ziva and blow her a kiss. "Sleep tight, kitten."

Tony's hand curled into a fist, but he controlled the impulse to grab the guy and deck him. He waited at the gate as Eddie turned and sauntered off back towards his car, then got in, started the engine and drove off. When he was gone, Tony let out a breath and turned to head back into the house. Ziva was waiting at the front door with a small smirk on her lips.

"Where did you come from?"

"Out back," he said simply. He joined her inside and closed and locked the front door.

"That was our proof," Ziva said. "If we can actually prove it."

Tony grinned and held up his phone. "I got it. Want to watch a home movie?"

Ziva looked at the phone and broke into a smile. She tugged on his hand and led him back to the kitchen. "I would love to."

Tony turned on the light as Ziva grabbed her laptop and turned it on. They sat together at the kitchen island as they waited for the computer to boot up, and Ziva looked him up and down with curiosity.

"Why are you so sweaty?" she asked, and then lifted two fingers to swipe them across his cheekbone. "And dirty?"

Tony shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."

She gave him a strange look, but didn't say anything more. She got up to find the cable to connect his phone to her laptop, but was distracted when the doorbell rang. Tony sat up straighter as Ziva reached for her gun at her back to make sure it was still there.

"It can't be him," Tony said, incredulous.

Ziva cocked her head like she wouldn't have much trouble believing it, and headed down the hallway. Tony put his foot up on the seat beside him to grab his backup from the ankle holster he'd taken to wearing again since quitting, and crept through the kitchen once more to the dining room to peek around the corner at the action. Ziva left her hand on her gun as she looked through the stained glass panel beside the front door. She pulled her head back abruptly, and swiveled around to look at him.

"It is the police," she said with disbelief.

Tony frowned at her—he hadn't been expecting that—and popped his head back as she opened the door to two men in police uniforms.

"Good evening, ma'am," one of the cops said. "Sorry to disturb you, but we were patrolling the neighborhood and received a report of a prowler in this street. One of your neighbors thought he might have gained entry to your home. Are you in need of assistance?"

In the dining room, Tony's eyebrows shot up before they crashed down again with his grimace. Damn it! He didn't think he'd been seen, but clearly he had. He thought fast as Ziva tried to assure the police there was nothing to worry about. He put his gun down, and before he fully worked out what he was doing he stripped off his t-shirt, toed off his shoes, yanked off his socks and dropped his jeans. He ran his hands vigorously through his hair to make it stand up at all angles (like a porcuswine, his brain supplied), wiped sweat and dirt from his face with his t-shirt, and then wandered sleepily out of the room and down the hallway to the front door again. The cops looked over Ziva's shoulder at him, and they both looked him up and down. Clearly, they thought that a sleepy man in nothing but his boxers wasn't a threat (at least, not in this nice neighborhood). Ziva looked over her shoulder to see what the officers were looking at, and Tony watched her eyes widen momentarily before she put her poker face back on.

"What's going on?" Tony asked, rubbing one of his eyes.

"We had a report of a man running through yards in this street," one of the officers told him. "A neighbor thought he might have come in here."

"In here?" Tony repeated as he leaned against the doorframe. He crossed his arms and looked at Ziva. "Are you seeing other men?"

Ziva regarded the officers. "It is just the two of us here," she told them. "We have been here all night."

"Mind if we take a quick look around?" the second officer asked.

"Yes," Ziva said. "We are fine. There is no one else here. But thank you for your concern."

Tony gave them a two-fingered salute to punctuate her statement.

Both officers looked them up and down again, but stepped back from the door.

"Well, stay vigilant," officer number one said. "If you see anything, give us a call."

"Thank you, officer," Ziva said, and closed the door on them. She turned to look at Tony and lifted an eyebrow in a request for further information.

Tony sighed. "I thought chances were good that you'd get Eddie to talk," he explained. "But we'd need evidence of it. I couldn't film it from the front yard because he'd see me, so I had to come through the back."

"So you jumped through my neighbors' yards?"

"Yeah, well your adventure yesterday inspired me."

To his relief, Ziva chuckled with good humor and patted his chest, then cocked her head towards the kitchen. He followed her back to the laptop, Ziva found the cord, and they sat down together again as he connected the phone and loaded the video onto her computer. In a stroke of good luck, the sound on the recording was clear enough, and so was Eddie's face.

"We just got Bonnie's ex on tape admitting to knowledge of surveillance equipment inside her home," Ziva said.

"Yep."

They looked at each other with proud smiles, and then Ziva impulsively leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"You can be brilliant at times, DiNozzo," she said, before looking him up and down. He was still just in his underwear. "Crazy," she added. "But brilliant."

Tony shrugged with nonchalance. "When you've got it, sweetcheeks, you've got it."

* * *

**A/N: A lot happening but I hope you followed it easily. I couldn't find a natural break to turn it into two chapters. But at least you get movement on 2013 case and Tony and Ziva, plus movement on 2015 case and Tony and Ziva ;)  
I got behind on responding to your lovely reviews but I think as of tonight I'm caught up with everyone who signed in to review. If I missed you, I'm so sorry! But thank you. And thanks to everyone leaving guest reviews. I've been worried that people were drifting from this (as is their right), but there is also a bunch of you who keep coming back, and that means a lot. See you next week. **


	10. Chapter 10

**Shorter chapter, but you'll see why.  
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

_Saturday, 19 December 2015_

Charles Fields played the part of the gentle giant well. He looked ridiculous sitting on the tiny chair in the NCIS conference room, Ziva thought as she watched the feed on the plasma in the bullpen. He may as well have been sitting on a child-sized chair, given how much of him was spilling over the sides of the seat and towering above the back. But Charlie, as he liked to be known, sat with his knees clamped together and his hands clasped in his lap, and he sank his head down into his shoulders as he waited for Gibbs to start questioning him. Ziva wondered if he was naturally shy, or if it was a deliberate attempt to make himself appear less imposing—and like less trouble—in front of law enforcement.

McGee had told her that when he and Gibbs had arrived at Charlie's door, their suspect had been polite and gave no resistance to their request that he come in for questioning. He had asked what NCIS wanted to talk to him about, but hadn't asked for further details after Gibbs told him it had to do with the death of one of their probationary agents. To Ziva, those reactions made it sound like Charlie was involved. But time—and Gibbs' questioning techniques—would soon tell.

And she wasn't giving up on Eddie Hertzog's involvement just yet. She was waiting by the phone for a call back from the warden at Greenvale Federal Penitentiary for information about whether Charlie and Eddie ran in the same circles. She was willing to put money on a positive reply.

On the plasma screen, Ziva watched Gibbs enter the room. Charlie sat up a little bit without pulling himself to full height. Just enough to show respect. Gibbs nodded at the agent who had been standing guard, and the probie agent left the room as Gibbs took a seat across from Charlie.

"Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, Mr Fields," Gibbs said, and flipped open a file folder in front of him.

"No problem," Charlie said, trying to soften his booming voice. "But I'm not sure I can help you."

Gibbs gave him a pleasant smile. "We'll see. I just want to repeat that you are not under arrest at this time."

Charlie cracked a nervous smile. "That's good."

"But we have evidence that suggests you might be able to help us in our investigation into the death of a probationary agent."

Ziva watched Charlie's reaction closely for signs of deception, or intent to deceive. He lifted his hands, palms up, and spread them as he shrugged.

"I don't think I can, sir."

"Well, let's try," Gibbs said.

"Is that him?"

Ziva jumped and turned at the sound of Tony's voice behind her. She hadn't registered the ding of the elevator that had brought him up to his old floor, or sensed someone moving towards her back. She nodded as he came up beside her.

"Charlie Fields," she said. "Apparently he made the phone call to Bonnie's cell phone before she died."

Tony touched her back briefly. "Does he know Bonnie?"

"We are about to find out."

Tony nodded and looked around the empty bullpen. "Where's your team?"

"We got a warrant to search Fields' house," she told him. "McGee and Quinn are going through it."

"Looking for paring knife?"

Ziva tilted her head to the side. "That would be helpful."

"Do you know a woman by the name of Bonnie Stewart?" Gibbs asked Charlie.

"No, sir," Charlie said, still being very careful with his tone.

Gibbs slid a glossy photo of Bonnie across the table to him. "Never met her?" Gibbs pressed, and tapped the photo. "Never talked to her?"

Charlie only glanced at the photo. "No, sir."

Gibbs left the photo in front of him. "How long have you been out of prison, Mr Fields?"

"Three weeks."

"You were in for assault and battery."

Charlie gave a single nod. "Yes, sir. But I'm trying to find my way now. I don't want any trouble. I just want to get a job and live my life."

"It's a noble goal," Gibbs told him. "Bonnie Stewart had the same goal. She'd just graduated from the federal agent training facility and was going to start here as a probationary agent in the new year."

Charlie didn't have anything to say to that. But his eyes darted around the room. Behind her, Ziva heard Tony grunt, and she nodded. Signs of guilt were beginning to creep in.

"You sure you never met her?" Gibbs asked.

"Yes, sir."

Gibbs took out another photo from his folder and slid it across the table to Charlie. It was a video still from the camera above the payphone where Charlie had placed the call the Bonnie's cell phone. "That photo was taken in Tacoma Park soon before Bonnie died."

Charlie glanced at the photo and quickly away again.

"We've got some real smart forensics people working here, Charlie," Gibbs said. "And those people determined that the man in this photo made a call to Bonnie Stewart's cell phone." He paused for Charlie to react, but the ex-con didn't say anything. "Those same smart forensic people managed to track this man several blocks using traffic cameras until they got a good shot of his face. You want to see it?"

Charlie started shaking his head, but Gibbs wasn't going to pay much attention to his polite declination. He slid another photo over to him that showed a close up of Charlie's face.

"Look familiar?" Gibbs asked.

"No, sir," Tony muttered behind Ziva's shoulder, dropping his voice as low as it would go in imitation.

"No, sir," Charlie said, as softly as could be.

Gibbs cracked a smile. "No? Come on, Charlie. You want to be an upstanding citizen? Start now."

Charlie's lips fused together.

Gibbs sighed dramatically. "All right. I guess you've been inside for a while. It can be hard to recognize yourself when you get out. That's you, Charlie."

"No, sir."

"That's you making a call to Bonnie Stewart right before she died."

"No—"

"It doesn't mean you're in trouble," Gibbs said, playing nice. "It doesn't mean you killed her. We're not suggesting you did. But we are awful interested in why you gave her a call."

Charlie clasped his hands together atop the table and dropped his head. "Sir, it was a wrong number."

Ziva groaned at the same moment Tony did.

"So it is you making that call?" Gibbs confirmed. "Okay, now we're getting somewhere. A wrong number, huh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why didn't you make another call? After you dialed the wrong number, I mean. When you got Bonnie instead of who you were trying to call, why didn't you make another call to the right number?"

Charlie licked his lips. "I didn't have any more quarters."

Gibbs bobbed his head agreeably. "Okay. So, who were you trying to call?"

"My, uh, my girlfriend."

"Lori?"

Charlie looked fleetingly worried that Gibbs knew his girlfriend's name, but nodded. "Yeah."

"Ball and chain, huh?" Gibbs cracked.

Tony chuckled, and Ziva sent him a glare that shut him up right before her desk phone rang.

"That's not how I think of you at all," Tony told her as she shoved past him with a little more force than necessary.

Ziva ignored him and picked up her phone. "David."

"Agent David, this is Warden Mike Sanders and Greenvale Penitentiary returning you call."

Ziva dropped into her seat and grabbed a pen as her adrenaline kicked in. "Yes, Warden. Thank you for calling."

"I got a message you were asking about a former inmate named Charles Fields and a current one named Eddie Hertzog."

"Yes," Ziva said. "Specifically, I am trying to ascertain whether the two men were in the same circles or gang."

"Well, they were cell mates," Warden Sanders drawled, with a smirk in his voice. "Does that count?"

Ziva's eyes widened and she looked up at Tony so fast that one of the bones in her neck cracked. "They were?"

"Last twelve months."

"And by all accounts, did they get along?"

"Oh, they were thick as thieves," the warden said. "You can take that to the bank."

"What?" Tony mouthed to her, and she broke into a smile.

"Is that all, Agent David?"

"That will do it, Warden. Thank you very much for your time. You may be seeing us out there very soon to talk to Hertzog."

"Can't wait," Sanders deadpanned, and then hung up.

Ziva slammed the receiver down and jumped to her feet. She joined Tony back at the plasma screen as she pulled out her cell phone.

"What's the word, my darling?" Tony cooed.

"Fields and Hertzog were cell mates," she told him, and quickly composed a text message to Gibbs along the same lines. "And close friends." She hit send and looked up at Tony to share a moment of triumph.

Tony looked at her with a small smile of pride. "Well. There you go. Nice work, probie."

She scrunched her nose at him. "Do not call me that."

He grinned and leant down to give her temple a quick kiss, and then they both watched the plasma as Gibbs took out his phone and read the message Ziva had sent. His eyes drifted in the direction of the conference room camera, and Ziva saw a flicker of a smile before he turned his attention back to Charlie.

"You know a guy named Eddie Hertzog?" Gibbs asked.

Charlie sat back in his seat and lifted his head a little bit. He cleared his throat. "Yes. We did time together at Greenvale."

"I hear you two were pretty tight."

Charlie thought about it and then shook his head. "Not so much. We bunked together. Don't make us brothers."

"Eddie had a history with Bonnie Stewart," Gibbs said conversationally. "Did you know that?"

"No."

"Yeah, he stalked her for a while," Gibbs went on. "Made videos of her in her apartment. Followed her around. Contacted her friends and family and told them lies about her. Really did a number on her." He paused, and Ziva braced herself by standing up straighter. She felt Tony lean into her. "He almost killed a woman who was trying to help her get the police to pay attention, too."

Charlie's right leg started to jiggle. "He said something about that," he admitted. "But I never knew anyone's name."

"No? He never told you to find out where Bonnie was, give her a call and give her a fright?"

"No."

"He didn't ask you to pay her a visit when you got out?"

Charlie hesitated. "Sir, am I under arrest?"

"Uh-oh," Tony muttered, right as Ziva's heart fell. They had been getting there, but it seemed that Charlie had been through the system enough times to know that he was on the verge of incriminating himself, and that it was time to shut up and lawyer up.

Gibbs heaved a deep breath and made a decision. He stood up and nodded. "Yes. I'm placing you under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. An agent will take you down to our formal interview room."

Charlie nodded as if it was a foregone conclusion. "Sir, I want a lawyer."

"You'll get one." Gibbs walked over to open the conference room door and then beckoned the agent stationed outside with his finger. A probationary agent came in. "Take Mr Fields down to interview."

As the agent took out his handcuffs and placed them on Charlie, Ziva looked up at Tony.

"Well, it was not a confession," she said. "But for now, it will do."

Tony nodded. "You're not really going to see Eddie, are you?" he asked. "I mean, Gibbs and McGee can do that. Hell, _I'll_ do that. I'd _love _to do that. Can I do that?"

She shook her head firmly. "No. I will do it. It might rattle him."

"Or it might give him some disgusting little thrill," Tony countered. "And rattle _you_ instead."

"Tony, I am perfectly—"

"I'm just thinking of last night."

Ziva swallowed as the fear she'd felt during her panic attack crept out of the recesses of her mind and gave her a poke. But that was why she wanted to be the one to talk to Eddie. To get some control back. "I will be fine, Tony."

He looked down at her with worry that made her simultaneously love him more and find frustration with how protective he could sometimes be. "I just don't want to feed you to him, Ziva," he said, lowering his voice against any eavesdroppers. "If you're right, and it looks like you could be, he succeeded in getting back at Bonnie. What if he's using this as a way to get back at you?"

Ziva swallowed against the phantom hands she suddenly felt around her throat. "He is in prison, Tony," she said softly. "He cannot hurt me."

"Not physically," Tony said. "Not like before. But he can still get at you."

She took a deep breath and lifted her chin defiantly. "Then I will just have to be more prepared to face him this time than I was before."

* * *

_Thursday, 4 July 2013_

No one answered when Ziva knocked on Tony's apartment door, so she fished out the set of keys he'd given her a few weeks ago and let herself in. There was a stillness and silence to the apartment that she wasn't expecting to find, and she dropped her bag on the floor by the door as quietly as she could.

"Hello?" she called out.

She was expecting Bonnie or Kavita to reply, but all she heard was the hum of the refrigerator. She stepped down into the living room and surveyed the scene quickly. Tony's Afghan blanket had been folded on top of a pillow and left neatly on the couch. There were no drink glasses left on the coffee table, and the remotes for the TV and Blu-ray had been stored together on the side table beside Tony's couch. Frowning, Ziva crossed to Tony's bedroom.

"Bonnie?" she called as she walked in. But no one was there. The single bed was made, and nothing else looked out of place. She peeked in Tony's closet out of curiosity (she couldn't believe how many of his clothes were at her place) and found it almost bare, save for a few suits. "Wow," she whispered to herself, and then kept moving.

His kitchen was as clean and devoid of life as the other rooms had been, and Ziva put her good hand on her hip and frowned. What the hell was going on? Where were Bonnie and Kavita? She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and re-read the text message McGee had sent her this morning. _Picks up Bonnie and Kevin_, the message read (she assumed 'Kevin' was autocorrect for 'Kavita'). Well, here she was to 'picks' them up (autocorrect hadn't fixed _that_) and take them back to her house to prepare for going to the police this afternoon, but the friends were nowhere to be seen.

Ziva swore under her breath in Hebrew. She sincerely doubted they would have left on their own, so what if Eddie had found them here? He had been able to find Ziva's new address. What was to say that he hadn't found Tony's and McGee's addresses as well and gone in search of Bonnie? She swore again and started to dial Tony.

"Hey, kitten."

Ziva spun and reached for her gun on reflex. But her arm was caught in her sling, and her gun wasn't on her hip anyway. She'd left home without it today. And judging by the smirk on Eddie Hertzog's face, he was aware that she was unarmed. Well, except for the knife she had concealed at her back. But Eddie didn't know that.

Eddie stood in the doorway between Tony's kitchen and living room, cutting off Ziva's escape route. His face was flushed and sweat beaded on his brow, and he wore a wrinkled blue shirt over ripped jeans. He looked frazzled, to say the least, and even as her adrenaline rose, Ziva couldn't help thinking how out of place he looked in Tony's neat and thoughtfully decorated apartment.

"Where is Bonnie?" she asked him, using what Tony called her 'scary-ass Mossad voice'.

Eddie's hands curled into fists by his thighs, and then relaxed again. "I was going to ask you the same thing," he said.

Ziva slipped her phone back into her pocket and faced Eddie head on. She didn't like his demeanor right now. He seemed far too agitated. If he was going to make a move on her, Ziva would have to be prepared for it—fractured shoulder or not.

"Did you follow me here?" she asked him.

Eddie gave her a cold smile. "I like your car." He took a step towards her, and Ziva held her hand out to stop him.

"Stay where you are," she warned him.

Eddie ignored her. "You screwed up, kitten," he told her. "You wanted to take my girlfriend away from me and hide her away? But you led me right to her."

"She is not your girlfriend," Ziva spat. "And your sense of entitlement is disgusting."

Eddie clutched his chest. "Oh, I'm disgusting? No, I'm the perfect boyfriend," he argued. "I pay attention to these women like no one else ever has. I keep them safe, I buy them presents, I open doors for them and take care of their problems."

Ziva crinkled her nose. "It is unfortunate that you were not born 100 years ago."

Eddie took another step towards her and stabbed a finger through the air at her. "You need to get out of the way of this before I put you out of the way permanently."

"Are you threatening me?"

Eddie's lip curled, but he didn't reply. "Where's Bonnie?" he asked. "Don't make me ask again."

Ziva narrowed her eyes. That was a good question. If she didn't have Bonnie, and if Eddie didn't have her (and Ziva believed he didn't), then where was she? "I do not know," she told him honestly. "Perhaps she saw you coming and ran for the mountains."

Eddie let out a humorless laugh, and then advanced on her for real. "Bitch," he muttered under his breath, and reached out to grab her arm. But Ziva saw it coming. She quickly sidestepped, reached over Eddie's shoulder to grip the back of his shirt, and pulled him down with all the strength she had as she brought her knee up and into his stomach. Eddie let out a satisfying _'oof!'_ before flinging his arm out wildly to try to grab Ziva's neck. She spun herself out of his reach, grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back and then kicked his feet out from under him. Once Eddie was face down on the ground, she planted her boot onto his wrist in the small of his back and reached for cell phone again to call 911.

"Stay down," she ordered him, and then allowed herself a smirk of satisfaction. Not bad, considering she was only using one arm. But her moment of pride was premature. Eddie still had one arm free as well, and he used it to push himself up off the ground. He spun around quickly, and Ziva's eyes widened at the transformation in his expression. The smug smirk was gone, replaced with a look of rage and hatred that Ziva had only seen on the faces of the most evil of men.

"Don't you _ever_ tell me what to do," Eddie warned her, and then, before Ziva's reflexes kicked in, he grabbed the phone out of her hand and hurled it against the wall. It shattered to pieces and left a small dent in its wake.

Ziva's adrenaline spiked as she realized this was about to turn into a real fight. The idea of beating the stuffing out of someone as odious as Eddie Hertzog was appealing, but she knew she had to be careful. The last man she had fought, she had killed. She didn't want that to happen here. And there was a good chance it wouldn't, given that she only had one working arm. Of course she would lose the sling and fight through the pain, but she would prefer to have Eddie incapacitated before she destroyed her shoulder completely.

She stood her ground and lifted her chin as Eddie loomed over her. "Calm down," Ziva told him firmly. "Do not—"

But Eddie wasn't listening. "Where's Bonnie?" he yelled, and took two threatening steps towards her. With another step he would be on top of her, and Ziva reacted on instinct and took the step from him. She used her momentum to plant her foot into the centre of his chest, and Eddie stumbled back with a cry and crashed into one of Tony's dining chairs. It bought her a breath of time to dash into the kitchen and make a grab for Tony's landline phone, but she'd only dialed a '9' before Eddie grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her backwards. She growled at the pain and stood all over Eddie's feet as she stumbled back, and she felt a sharp stab in her right shoulder as she tried to throw her immobilized arm backwards to grab at Eddie. Before she'd found her footing, Eddie gripped her elbow like a vice, tightened his fist in her hair and threw her face-first into the fridge. Throbbing pain radiated out from the centre of Ziva's forehead as her face collided with the fridge door and pressure built in her ears, and then she fell hard onto the ground. She tried to brace the fall with her left arm, but it collapsed beneath her and she hit her chin on the tiles. She tasted blood in her mouth.

On the floor, Ziva shook her head as if it would help her regain her bearings. It hurt her head but it had some positive outcome too when she realized she was within arm's reach of the cupboard under the sink. She didn't know about Tony, but she kept things like bleach and Lysol under her kitchen sink. If she was lucky, there might be some kind of solvent in the cupboard that she could throw in Eddie and incapacitate him. Because she was beginning to feel like she didn't have the upper hand in this fight anymore.

She threw her left arm out and managed to get the cupboard open before Eddie grabbed her again. He took her elbow in that same vice-like grip, dug his other hand under her stomach, and then heaved and threw her down the other end of the kitchen as if she was a doll. His strength was utterly unexpected, and it panicked Ziva more than she would have liked. She had taken out men stronger than Eddie before, she reminded herself. She could do it again. She just had to lose the sling, grab her knife and fight through it. She knew how to do that. Fighting through it was the story of her life.

She quickly pushed herself to a sitting position and ripped open the Velcro tab that kept the sling against her body. With that done, she tried to shake the sling off her right arm as she reached behind her with her left hand and attempted to grab the knife tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Her fingers brushed against the handle but she couldn't grip it properly, and her right arm was still tangled in the sling when Eddie came at her again. Sweat now ran down his face and his cheeks were bright red, but Ziva's attention was on the large glass vase he held in his right hand. Ziva momentarily gave up on her knife and leaned back on her elbow as she kicked out with her legs and knocked Eddie to the ground again. He landed hard, but he kept his grip on the vase and recovered fast enough to twist himself forward, get to one knee and bring the vase back behind his head in a wide arc.

"NO!" Ziva yelled, and managed to turn her head just far enough so that when Eddie brought the vase down and smashed it against her head, he missed her face. Or maybe he didn't. Ziva couldn't be sure, because if the whack to the head she'd gotten from the fridge hadn't disoriented her, the vase certainly did. Burning agony exploded through her skull and face, and Ziva suddenly felt incredibly dizzy. Her stomach rolled with nausea, and for a few moments she couldn't catch her breath. It just hurt too much. She opened her eyes but couldn't make out anything more than blurred shapes around her. And it was then that Ziva _really_ began to panic. Eddie was stronger and faster, and was being fuelled by fury. She had a concussion, a broken shoulder and couldn't see straight. She knew she would fight until her last breath, but if Eddie was so inclined, her last breath wouldn't be too long from now.

"Stop," she breathed out, and reached out with her good arm to grab onto Eddie. It didn't matter what part of him she landed on. She would drive her nails into him as hard as she could and maybe buy a little more time.

Eddie slapped her hand away, and it was then that Ziva realized that he was sitting on top of her, straddling her hips and holding her down. "_Be quiet!_" he hissed at her. "_Be still!_"

Ziva's panic went up a notch. "Get off me!" she rasped. She tried to buck him off her, but Eddie just seemed to grow larger over her, and his weight got heavier. His bright red face, twisted with anger, loomed in her blurred vision before his hands wrapped around her throat.

"Be quiet!" he ordered her again, and then started to squeeze her neck. "I don't want to hurt you anymore. Just _be quiet!_" He shook her by the throat.

Ziva heard him, but couldn't make sense of what he said. She fought to suck in a painful breath and grabbed at his wrists with both of her hands. His hands got tighter and he pushed his body down on hers. She felt immobilized as he pressed against her harder and harder, and squeezed her neck tighter and tighter as he yelled at her. She couldn't hear what he was saying anymore. The blood rushing through her ears was deafening, and the throbbing agony in her head scattered her thoughts too much for her to make full sense of what was happening. It was that confusion that allowed her mind to float off to another time of similar brutality. With her next forced gasp of air, Ziva inhaled the desert sand and she smelled the sickly-sweet scent of Caf-Pow mixed with sweat and cigarettes. The hands around her neck got rougher, and Eddie's body holding her down turned into half a dozen hands and rough ropes. Her heart rate tripled and the pain in her head radiated down between her legs. She knew what came next.

Eddie gave her throat another shake, snapping her back into the present. But the shift wasn't any better. The rapes from Saleem were over, but Eddie's was yet to begin. She let out a single, choked sob as despair slammed into her chest and broke her heart again, but she caught herself before she let out another. She made a promise to herself in Somalia that she would not give Saleem her cries. She would not give him that pleasure. And now, she would not let Eddie have them either. He might kill her now—and God, she hoped if he did, that he would do it before she was violated again—but she would not cry out or beg. _She would not._

Eddie's hands around her throat finally sapped her strength, and Ziva felt the undeniable warmth of unconsciousness begin to wrap around her. In her final moments of awareness, as she drug her nails into Eddie's wrists as hard as she could, Ziva thought of Tony and her regrets for all the chances they'd squandered. She hoped he would forgive her for dying on his kitchen floor.

Unexpectedly, Eddie let go of her throat, but Ziva's moment of hope was fleeting as he gripped her hair in his fist again. "You should've just told me where she was, kitten," he told her, and then slammed her head back against the tiles.

And Ziva floated into the darkness.

* * *

**[Posts and then runs and ducks for cover.]**


End file.
